When scarce or out-of-print books and other media begin to deteriorate, their contents don’t have to be lost. Once Was Media specializes in preservation, restoration, and reprint services, helping archives, libraries, researchers, and collectors digitize, restore, and reproduce fragile publications. Services include:
See some of our favorite examples below.

Once Was Media cleaned up a very old, scratched, and discolored photograph showing this train station at Bagdad, CA (circa 1890) and created this engaging 12-second video with the use of AI tools.
Applied to books, our process—sometimes called destructive scanning—carefully removes the binding of deteriorating books or other print media so each page can be professionally digitized, cleaned, and preserved as accurate digital files or high-quality reprints.