Q: iPhone Camera for Old Document Text?

I expect within a couple of weeks to be allotted a brief amount of time to photograph some typewritten and handwritten text in court notebooks created around 1900 (ancestry research). This happened unexpectedly a year or so ago, but when I got permission to see the books and copy some pages, I was ill prepared, and didn't have a lot of iPhone camera knowledge. The books are stored in a badly lit basement, and the person who manages them gave me no chance to align, focus or do much of anything except punch the iphone 5 button and hope. 5-10 seconds per page max. There was no worktable or light--just the oversize records leaned against the back of a chair. These circumstances will likely be the same