I was asked recently about how to scan large amounts of old newspapers. These two links came from Humanist and provide a good survey of what a professional library digitization units do.
The University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service has a site on their Digital Conversion Services.
The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, has a Digital Imaging and Media Technology Initiative which offers Imaging Advice.
Both these links came from Kevin Hawkins on Humanist.