[Lowell Goudge]

If you must retain the bindings for some reason make a copy stand. Get an old enlarger, preferably one with a sloped column, and a short macro lens(35mm may be good for this). Then you need to work on lighting, uniform lighting is a real issue if you want to reproduce the images without any change in tone across the whole image, do not, repeat not, use direct daylight. It will not uniformly light the subject.

If the binding can be opened, then really a scanner is the best bet

[magkelly]

Doh! (slaps forehead). You are quite right, and my Rube Goldberg machine was a bad idea. To make it worse, I had dinner a few years ago with the curator of the rare book collection at a university (along with her husband), and we discussed the mechanics of digitizing 400 year old books. With my old age, I can't exactly remember what she said, but I do remember being shocked at how casually they were treating these books. Maybe the curatorial procedure for priceless manuscripts is simply pressing the spine of a book down on the scanner glass, passing a light bar under the glass, flipping the page over and repeating.

Hello, have you never heard of a hand held scanner? FYI, they use them to make archival copies of precious manuscripts all the time. I would never put a rare bound book down on a flatbed. But there are other ways. Saw them used first in the NYPL rare book dept actually. :P