Let's lift Ukraine up and rejoice the souls of those "ancient, great Kyiv" Yaroslavs and Monomakhs
The Sumerian cuneiform, inscribed in clay and stone, has survived for millennia.Ukrainian literary heritage was less fortunate. Due to language bans, many books written in Ukrainian were destroyed. Even when carefully hidden in libraries, paper books do not last forever. Luckily, it is now possible to immortalize literary monuments and the culture of beautiful writing in a digital format.
Digital copies may not be quite as romantic as original tomes, but they are safe from fires and wars, and will continue to exist as long as humanity has electricity and computers. Moreover, they offer an additional benefit: anyone with an internet connection can access them.
Ukrainian libraries have started digitizing literary masterpieces since the late 20th century. In recent years, more convenient tools have emerged for this task, such as mobile scanner applications that allow you to create digital copies of precious old prints quickly and safely.
AIN.UA’s editors, together with Readdle, showcase how modern technologies help preserve literary heritage through the use of a mobile scanner — in this case, Readdle’s Scanner Pro app. We interviewed the National Historical Library and the Readdle team to learn about the importance of digitizing old books, photos, and other archive documents. We also manually scanned the first print of Panteleimon Kulish's "Black Council" from 1857 in order to understand how the technology works, and what results can be obtained.
Scanner Pro was proudly developed by a Ukrainian team of product designers, product managers, support specialists, an R&D team, testers, and developers. Despite the start of the full-scale war, Readdle has continued to hire in Ukraine and currently offers a number of vacancies.
The Sumerian cuneiform, inscribed in clay and stone, has survived for millennia.
Ukrainian literary heritage was less fortunate. Due to language bans, many books written in Ukrainian were destroyed. Even when carefully hidden in libraries, paper books do not last forever. Luckily, it is now possible to immortalize literary monuments and the culture of beautiful writing in a digital format.
Digital copies may not be quite as romantic as original tomes, but they are safe from fires and wars, and will continue to exist as long as humanity has electricity and computers. Moreover, they offer an additional benefit: anyone with an internet connection can access them.
Ukrainian libraries have started digitizing literary masterpieces since the late 20th century. In recent years, more convenient tools have emerged for this task, such as mobile scanner applications that allow you to create digital copies of precious old prints quickly and safely.
Let's lift Ukraine up and rejoice the souls of those "ancient, great Kyiv" Yaroslavs and Monomakhs
AIN.UA’s editors, together with Readdle, showcase how modern technologies help preserve literary heritage through the use of a mobile scanner — in this case, Readdle’s Scanner Pro app. We interviewed the National Historical Library and the Readdle team to learn about the importance of digitizing old books, photos, and other archive documents. We also manually scanned the first print of Panteleimon Kulish's "Black Council" from 1857 in order to understand how the technology works, and what results can be obtained.
Scanner Pro was proudly developed by a Ukrainian team of product designers, product managers, support specialists, an R&D team, testers, and developers. Despite the start of the full-scale war, Readdle has continued to hire in Ukraine and currently offers a number of vacancies.
Digital life for old books
As of the beginning of 2023, almost 350 libraries had been bombed and looted
Throughout human history, the written word has been subject to irreversible destruction. And Ukraine hasn’t been immune to such occurrences: from the burning of the "Teacher's Gospel" by Kirill Stavrovetsky to the destruction of libraries by Russian occupiers during the ongoing full-scale war.
Even in times of peace, paper books are vulnerable to fires, floods, or thefts. In 2009, nearly a thousand books were damaged due to flooding in the Lutsk Library. In 2016, the National Library of Ukraine, named after V.I. Vernadsky, was robbed of the precious "Apostle" by Ivan Fedorov from 1574, the first printed book of Ukraine, which exists in only 90 copies (a year later, it was found by law enforcement officers).
So, when Ukrainian libraries had the opportunity to digitize books, they began to do so en masse, in order to preserve rare and valuable publications for future generations of readers and scientists.
According to the National Historical Library of Ukraine (hereinafter NIBU), the process of digitization in libraries began at the end of the 20th century, with the first successful attempts to digitize valuable printed publications made in the 2010s. The first digitized book at NIBU was a local publication by Vasyl Zverynskyi about the history and names of Orthodox monasteries.
The first digitized book at NIBU was a local publication by Vasyl Zverynskyi about the history and names of Orthodox monasteries. However, the scanning process was time-consuming because it was done on a non-professional A4 format Plustek scanner. Each page had to be removed separately, and the 1892 book required careful handling due to worn and read pages.
Later, NIBU received a professional scanner as part of the project "Historical Heritage of Ukraine - worldwide access in electronic format" (Digital Ukraine Worldwide), and since then, the process has been more efficient. Currently, a team of five IT specialists scans rare books in the library using professional scanners such as VersaLink A3, Avision A3 Bookedge Scanner, and Plustek OpticBook 4600.
Despite the use of professional equipment, book scanning remains a slow process, as older editions require more delicate handling. According to NIBU, which has scanned 2,300 rare and valuable publications as of 2023, an average of 100 pages can be digitized in 1 hour.
Creating digital copies of ancient books serves two important purposes:
a secure backup of the original book on a separate server;
access to custom copies in PDF format from any device.
Another aspect of digitization is related to the war, which has caused the price of paper books in Ukraine to double (according to the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine). During the war, there has been an increase in demand for digital reading, as reported by Forbes, with e-book sales increasing by 1.5 times on Yakaboo and 2.5 times on Booknet. So the availability not only of modern authors but also rare old editions would be a valuable addition for Ukrainian readers.
Using special applications for scanning paper documents, such as mobile scanners, can accelerate the process of digitizing books. Our AIN.UA team visited NIBU and used Scanner Pro from the Ukrainian company Readdle to create a digital copy of the first edition of Panteleimon Kulish's 1857 novel. "The Black Council".
Book digitization is important both for the preservation of book rarities and for the possibility of remote access to their digital copies from any device and any place on the globe where there is an Internet connection.
Digital Kulish: how we scanned the "Black Council"
Why Kulish?
"Black Council" by Panteleimon Kulish is the first historical novel in the Ukrainian language, which took the author 14 years to write. The fate of the novel was tumultuous, much like that of its author. It was written in both Ukrainian and Russian (although the author emphasized that the Ukrainian version was the original). Shevchenko was approached to illustrate the novel, but he declined, and the novel underwent multiple revisions and edits.
According to literary critic Oles Fedoruk, Kulish created six novel manuscripts, rewriting five by hand. Each draft was originally written as a clean copy but turned into a draft in the process as the author reworked it repeatedly. Despite having the Ukrainian version of the novel ready as early as 1847, Kulish was arrested for his involvement with the Cyril and Methodius brotherhood, delaying its publication. The novel had to undergo Russian censorship to finally reach print.
Researcher Vira Ageyeva refers to "The Black Council" as the first "Walter Scott" novel of Ukrainian literature. In the afterword, Kulish affirms the right of Ukrainians to their own language and literature, arguing with those Russian writers and critics who advised writing in "rural" Ukrainian and creating works in Russian for universal comprehension.
In the Russian Empire, the author's books were frequently arrested, seized, banned, and destroyed in thousands of editions. In the 1850s, Kulish wrote about Russian censorship: "One day, the time of freedom will come for me; one day, I will escape from this terrible state." The fact that Kulish managed to publish his novel in Ukrainian, bypassing censorship, is almost a miracle.
Inspired by the literature’s history, which persisted despite destroyed books, bans, and author arrests, we digitized Kulish’s work at NIBU.
How we scanned Kulish’s work
For scanning, we requested access to the first edition: Kulish p. Black Council, Chronicle of 1663 / written by P. Kulish. — St. Petersburg: [Print. Alexander Yakobson], 1857. — 428, [1] p. Olha Andrusiv, manager of special projects at AIN.UA, went to NIBU to see how the mobile application would cope with book scanning.
"If my classmates and I had known about Scanner Pro ten years ago, it would have made life much easier, saving us a lot of time. After all, we either took pictures of books with our phones and digital cameras or made photocopies. Professional literature in digital form, accessible in libraries, was a rarity at that time," she recalls.
This book had to be treated carefully, but even with the utmost care, a mobile scanner was able to scan all 428 pages of The Black Council in only three hours. Moreover, the scanner not only automatically captured the pages but also processed them to create a digital book format.
"The application automatically cuts the edges and aligns the text in the photo (this is especially useful for working with thick books that do not unfold well). Readdle Support Team Lead Olga Piskunovska, it is best to take up to 50 pictures (one section of "Black Council") and save them to ensure uninterrupted operation of the application. Once the scanned files are saved, they can be edited, collected in one folder, and uploaded to Google Drive," says Olha.
The library itself also appreciated the capabilities of the mobile scanner: in addition to creating digital copies of books or cartographic or pictorial publications, it would be convenient to use it for presentations, for bibliographic research, when it is necessary to scan several pages of the publication, illustrations.
How to digitize a book (or other paper documents)
Scanner Pro is specially designed to make scanning easy and safe, especially for vintage books. It works on a large selection of Apple devices, from the iPhone 6S to the latest model, as explained by Olga Piskunovska, Support Team Lead at Readdle. We tested how Scanner Pro works on different devices by scanning Black Council on Scanner Pro on iPad, iPhone XR, and iPhone 13 and found that it performed well every time. The scanning process is simple. Just download the app from the App Store, point the camera at the document, press the button, and scan. Olga Piskunovska offers some valuable advice for users:
There is no need to set up additional lighting or make any adjustments – ordinary office or street lighting is sufficient.
If you synchronize the app with the cloud (e.g., iCloud or Google Drive) during scanning, then the older the device, the fewer pages you should scan at a time.
For example, when scanning documents or a book using an old iPhone SE, it is better to scan five pages at a time. And if you scan with the newest iPad, you can scan 50-100 pages at once.
The application can stitch all scanned parts into one file
Corner Alignment: Unlike other scanning apps, Scanner Pro can move the crop around the corners. For instance, if you need to scan a crumpled check or page, you can get an image with even edges.
The scanner can fully recognize the scanned text
Thanks to AI, the app can remove all the noise from the scan. For example, if you hold a book with your fingers while scanning and they appear in the frame, don't worry – the app will remove them from the final image
Olga Piskunovska recalls spending countless hours in the library working with old books during her studies to become a philologist. At first, she was surprised when she found out they were going to scan an old first edition as old books are so fragile. However, with a mobile scanner like Scanner Pro, the books are minimally touched, and there’s no need to bend or align the pages, making the process safe for the book.
When a mobile scanner comes in handy
Digitization of old books, magazines, and documents is one of the many use cases for such a mobile scanner. Initially developed with a greater focus on business document scanning, Scanner Pro has expanded greatly over the years, with people from all over the world using it to collect checks or receipts, scan old photos, documents, or even sheet music. Here are some examples:
The mobile scanners’ audience is large and diverse, with 2 million people from the USA, Germany, Britain, Canada, and many other countries using it monthly. The 2020-2021 pandemic gave a significant boost in usage, according to Product Manager Elena Plescan, as students could remotely scan and send homework to teachers, and entrepreneurs could forward documentation. Currently, 50% of users utilize the scanner for personal purposes, about 35% scan for work, and another 10-15% are students or teachers who use it for training, as Elena notes.
Who performs the scanning magic
The Scanner Pro application has been in the App Store for over 10 years and is one of the company's oldest products. Despite its age, most of the team that developed it is still working in the company, as Ievgen Bieliakov, Product Engineering Lead at Readdle, notes.
Scanner Pro is probably the most complex and technologically advanced application I've worked on in my nearly 20-year career. When I joined the team, I was personally impressed.
Currently, a team of engineers, designers, as well as specialists in R&D, support, testing, and marketing are working on the application. Despite its simple interface and algorithms, Scanner Pro is a rather complex product underneath, with non-trivial and interesting technological challenges.
Join the teamWho performs the scanning magic
The Scanner Pro application has been in the App Store for over 10 years and is one of the company's oldest products. Despite its age, most of the team that developed it is still working in the company, as Ievgen Bieliakov, Product Engineering Lead at Readdle, notes.
Currently, a team of engineers, designers, as well as specialists in R&D, support, testing, and marketing are working on the application. Despite its simple interface and algorithms, Scanner Pro is a rather complex product underneath, with non-trivial and interesting technological challenges.
This requires engineers to create algorithms that are not only fast and efficient but also produce high-quality results with minimal memory consumption.
Scanner Pro is probably the most complex and technologically advanced application I've worked on in my nearly 20-year career. When I joined the team, I was personally impressed
Another challenge is integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the scanning process. AI algorithms can help clean up scans by removing noise and imperfections caused by finger rubbing or other factors. The company is also considering integrating ChatGPT, which can help search for documents based on text or other attributes.
Scanner Pro has clearly surpassed its original idea. We began by developing specialized functions for different user groups, resulting in the application now having numerous previously impossible functions (shadow removal, eraser, finger detection, book mode).
Looking ahead, our near-term plans to enhance the application involve learning to scan different types of documents and produce flawless digital copies of physical documents — accurately recognizing text, images, and other elements.
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Digitized Kulish: what we achieved
The team’s efforts have paid off well. Readdle is one of the few product companies whose support team often receives messages from users expressing their love for Scanner Pro, not complaints of issues. Seeing how Scanner Pro is used motivates the team to continue their work. After all, how often can a developer boast that his product is used for the digital immortality of the most important books of Ukrainian literature?
It’s incredible to think that I had an opportunity to work with such a valuable copy and gain a unique experience in digitizing a book like this.
So how did our Black Council scan experiment end up? Overall, the "digital Kulish" looks almost identical to the original, and it is even more convenient to read. The only thing that could make the experience even better is the specific aroma of an old book. No paper book can last forever. Regular paperback books can last for decades, but even if a book is valuable and well-preserved, it can only survive for a few hundred years at best. Dust, dirt, sunlight, moisture, and temperature all work against its longevity.
"Maps, manuscripts, book pages are being worn out more and more every day. All major research laboratories are sitting on a ticking time bomb,” — this quote from the chief librarian of the University of California at Berkeley was published by The New York Times 35 years ago.Digitizing books and documents is one way to deal with this.
The digital archives of humanity's greatest literary and historical monuments are crucial for making knowledge accessible to everyone. By digitizing old and valuable publications, not only scientists but also people around the world can gain access to them.
Digitized Kulish: what we achieved
The team’s efforts have paid off well. Readdle is one of the few product companies whose support team often receives messages from users expressing their love for Scanner Pro, not complaints of issues. Seeing how Scanner Pro is used motivates the team to continue their work. After all, how often can a developer boast that his product is used for the digital immortality of the most important books of Ukrainian literature?
So how did our Black Council scan experiment end up? Overall, the "digital Kulish" looks almost identical to the original, and it is even more convenient to read. The only thing that could make the experience even better is the specific aroma of an old book. No paper book can last forever. Regular paperback books can last for decades, but even if a book is valuable and well-preserved, it can only survive for a few hundred years at best. Dust, dirt, sunlight, moisture, and temperature all work against its longevity.
It’s incredible to think that I had an opportunity to work with such a valuable copy and gain a unique experience in digitizing a book like this.
"Maps, manuscripts, book pages are being worn out more and more every day. All major research laboratories are sitting on a ticking time bomb,” — this quote from the chief librarian of the University of California at Berkeley was published by The New York Times 35 years ago.Digitizing books and documents is one way to deal with this.
The digital archives of humanity's greatest literary and historical monuments are crucial for making knowledge accessible to everyone. By digitizing old and valuable publications, not only scientists but also people around the world can gain access to them.
