I currently work for the University I study at in the (biomedical) library. I scan lots of old journal articles and periodicals for academics who need it for their research. A typical job might be scanning an article from 1960 on Potato Research for an agriculturalist, or a graph of human energy expenditure, or an analysis of fibres for forensic medicine. We get researchers from all around the world requesting articles on all sorts of topics from our archives. It's a Sandstone university, so we have some very old collections that are definitely getting crumby!

Other than locating the books, by far the most tedious aspect is the scanning. We only have a terrible flatbed scanner, that is completely unforgiving - it only has a 25 page email limit, otherwise you have to split it into separate emails. And if you mis-scan a page accidentally (some of the book margins are super tight), then you have to restart the entire scan - there's no delete page button!