I completely concur about the SIL Gentium font for multilingual printing. I've used it for years now for Russian-English documents. It's only drawback is that it doesn't render nearly as nicely in browsers as it does on the printed page. (My version of Gentium is old, so maybe something about the font has changed so it is no longer the case.)

Last week I successfully scanned Grampa's thesis (a bound book with oversized maps in the appendix) using a two person approach. I held the digital camera so that each page maximually filled the viewer; that is, I photographed each portrait page in landscape mode and used software later to rotate them. Dad held the book open to the proper page. The process went very quickly since he could turn the pages while I shot, and he could take responsibility for ensuring flatness of the page. It's best to use a couple bright lamps at the side for lighting instead of the flash. If I were doing this on my own, I would mount the camera on a tripod and use the remote to trigger it. I always scan this original archival stuff to TIFF for best reproduction and then manipulate it later into a format suitable to the viewing medium.