Thank You Arielenter I'm sorry for the late reply.
The scanner was not recognised when I tried to scan, I had to download the drivers from the Epson website. There were drivers for the Linux kernel, I also had to do this for the old OS before I switched to Trisquel, but on closer inspection of the "Readme" file, there was mention that some scanners require non-free plugins to work. I suspect this may be the case here. I'm putting these comments out here just in case another novice is asking the same questions :)and to thank you again for your help.
kind regards
