Librarians and archivists find themselves facing the prospect of digitization. Everyone is doing it, everyone needs it. Discussions rage nationally and internationally concerning what to digitize and the best means to present and retain digital objects. Digitization is the act of making something digital, expressing a physical object "in numerical form, especially for use by a computer." This article discusses how digitization equipment, particularly flatbed scanners, work and how to enhance the scanning process. Making good scans means doing more than just pressing buttons. One can create digital images with optimal quality if he or she understands what software to choose, which file formats to use, and what the specifications really mean.