Creating A Multi Page Documents With IrfanView

Some important documents are more than 1 page and it is nice to have it on 1 file. You will probably want to see if your scanner software comes with these options first.

IrfanView www.irfanview.net makes very nice multi page TIF & PDF files that are nice for archiving & sharing, the disadvantage is the Compression on the PDF files still leave rather large files. But if you use a PDF printer driver to make the PDF file you can make them small enough to email.

Steps for make a multi page TIF that some people prefer for archiving:

1. Open IrfanView.
2. Click “View”> put mouse over “Multiple Page Images”> and click “Create Multiple Page TIF”.
3. Click “Add Images” find the images you want> sort if needed> click “Compression” choose what you want> click “Browse” to put it where you want it on your computer> give it a “name”> click “Create TIF Image” and your done.

Steps for make a multi page PDF with IrfanView:

1. Open your TIF in IrfanView.
2. Click “Save As”> choose "Save as type: PDF - Portable Document Format".
3. In the PDF Settings Tab "layout" Page Format=Like Image. Page Rotation=none. Page Border=unchecked. Compression Tab=Activate Compression is checked.
4. Give it a name and click “Save”.

Steps for make a multi page PDF with a PDF Printer Driver:

1. Open your TIF in IrfanView.
2. Click “File”> “Print”.
3. 3. In Print Preview, Printer=your PDF Printer Driver. Choose “Portrait” or “Landscape” depending on your document. Print Size=Best fit to page, Mulipage images=Print all pages> Then click "Print". Just follow your PDF Printer Driver steps to finish.

TIF files that worked with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer:
*No compression (recommended)
*Original 909 KB - TIF 22.4 MB - PDF 9.36 MB
*With PDF Printer Driver it is 1.02 MB

*With Packbits compression
*Original 909 KB - TIF 18.2 MB - PDF 9.36 MB
*With PDF Printer Driver it is 1.02 MB

*With LZW compression
*Original 909 KB - TIF 15.7 MB - PDF 9.36 MB
*With PDF Printer Driver it is 1.02 MB

As you can see there is no difference on the PDF files but the using the PDF Printer Driver is much better for emailing. The difference is the PDF Printer Driver will leave a larger blank area because it is trying to fit it to an 8.5x11 page.

There are other commercial products that that work better but IrfanView is donation ware.

Newspapers On The Library of Congress Website

Looks like the U.S. Newspaper Program http://www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html is starting to pay off. I have always liked Colorado & Utah's free digital newspapers. Now it looks like you will be able to access the digital papers from The Library of Congress website. Now in BETA, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.html only covers 25 papers in 7 states between 1900-1910, but this will be an interesting project to watch.

The Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers website will also let you find information about newspapers published in the United States from 1690 to the present in the Chronicling America Directory & tell you where you can find them.

Hoping to find the original digital newspaper websites for a larger database I was able to find these:
CA-http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cndpsearch.pl
DC-not found
FL-http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/UFDC.aspx?c=fdnl1
KY-http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?;page=simpleext&c=kynews
NY-not found
UT-http://www.lib.utah.edu/digital/unews/index.html
VA-not found

Good site for finding world wide digital newspapers:
The International Coalition on Newspapers-http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm