I have been careful to switch off auto settings, colour restoration, dust removal etc etc when I scan and leaving corrections until I reach Photoshop. Wondering though if there is any benefit at all to using the unsharp mask filter at the scanning stage?

Everyone has their own workflow that they like, but I personally feel it's better to do it all in Photoshop.

Although dust removal is a different situation, if you mean Digital ICE.

No - I don't have Digital IceICE on my home scanner (worse luck)

yeah in that case just use the scanner plainly and do all your post-work in Photoshop. Try crop, levels, color, then sharpen. If you sharpen first, it throws levels off just a TAD.

Personally when i sharpen a scanned picture, i first sharpen with respect to actual paper flaws (1px/400%/20-thresh), fix the paper flaws and then re-sharpen with something like 2px/75%/05-thresh, depending on what sort of picture. I could almost set it as an automated action because i follow those steps so regularly.

After that, final sharpening/noise reduction just depends on each job.