Antique books can be used books and antiquarian books, prints, maps. Independent professional book dealers present them. All of them are a part of professional organizations with high standards and strive to satisfy their customers fully. New methods and technology have made possible the restoration of old antique books. These books can also be termed as the old books of ancient times, that dates back way behind on the history, the classic or vintage books. They can be available in any vast libraries or through the internet. Antique books are also available in this form, in fact it has become a fad to read these by accessing them through the web and they can be preserved for a very long time as they are in digitized form.

The antique books give a sense of pleasure to all the reading lovers. They form one of the major attractions for the book readers. This is similar in spirit of people to preserve antique furniture and other items. The old books are very valuable and can be preserved in the library as an asset. The antique books are best when the pages of the book looks as the new ones appear. Even little discoloring of pages and pictures is considered to be okay. However, the main objective of the antique books is to present the book as it originally appears, approximating the experience to the user of reading the actual book.

If someone is interested in buying the antique books of special category, they can do so either from bookstalls or by ordering through the web sites. The prices of the antique books are quite high. Each book's price is decided after carefully examining the book. Only book lovers purchase these books and who have intense reading as their hobby. It can also serve as a good investment. Most of them get thrilled just by viewing an old book, which compels them to collect it. The most widely liked way is to read the book online. They are possible through the digital libraries that create the digital forms of the antique books.

The restoration of antique books is available now through many new methods and technologies. The different ways are by scanning, print separation and enhancement, and many other standard processes. The important aspects for these old books are their condition and the edition. To elaborate a little on the methods and its hierarchy we start with the scanning method.

Scanning is also known as digitally photographing the pages at a resolution of at least 600 dots per inch in full 24-bit color. The resolution can vary from one book library or press to others. The main motive of this technique is to print all the details comprehensibly captured in the original image with partial over sampling.

After capturing the image, the next step is to process separately the printed and the non- printed components of the image. This concept is easily done.

Print enhancement commences from Laplacian enhancement then it is averaged down to display resolution. Then, the Laplacian technique is used to print at the display resolution. It is a standard signaling process that smoothes and makes the edges sharp simultaneously.
Print Storage consists of saving the result as a transparent GIF file. The translucent part shows through the background.

The non-print processing consists of turning the background by processing it into a true HTML background type. Once all the above-mentioned steps are done and computed, the view then can be merged in the browser.

ANTIQBOOK is a searchable database of used books presented by individual professional book dealers. This web site brings you directly in touch with the booksellers. Many other sites do the similar type of work.