Comments on: Book Scanning

By: Robert B

Robert B — Sat, 08 May 2010 22:35:40 +0000

Different people do different things. The one scanning historical documents puts them on the web. I scan my collection of books and save them privately. The end result, if you don’t OCR, can be a PDF, with each page being an image. Personally, I’ve never met an OCR program that I like.

By: Ovid Bika

Ovid Bika — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:49:38 +0000

So what is the finality to all this scanning? Do you upload them to the internet or do you create your own private digital libraries?
I am a new postgraduate student and I dread the day when I will have to pay 14k pounds for the program I am enrolled in….

By: Robert B

Robert B — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:25:56 +0000

You might try the Kurzweil Reader, built by my personal hero, Dr. Ray Kurzweil. It is a print-to-speech device which is built specifically for those with difficulty seeing or reading print. I highly recommend it.

By: Matroval

Matroval — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:29:53 +0000

Hello, I have perfect vision according to the doctor who examined me lately, since I was involved in explosion incident in Iraq, neither my hearing nor my vision seemed to be right as far as I know, I used to read books but not anymore, every time I try to read any book, I get headache and my eyes can not focus, so I had to start scanning my school books and convert them to audio and listen, buy scanning and editing my school books then converting them to Audio is time consuming, I came across this forum while looking for auto-scanner, I am not sure if someone can suggest me any scanner at all but I am really looking to buy or build my own book scanner which I can easily connect to a computer and use it, my current one is the “HP7200 all in one” wireless and it works great specially when scanning a book as PDF file, but it takes a lot of time to scan the whole book.
Please if you have any suggestion e-mail me at servicenazret@gmail.com, I can buy only a product in USA no Canada or UK or china.
Thanks.

By: Daniel Reetz

Daniel Reetz — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:12:19 +0000

I second Rob — please come join us at DIYbookscanner.org and contribute what you know. We have lots of helpful, smart people working on both the hardware and software problems facing everyone interested in scanning. You’d be most welcome.

By: Robert B

Robert B — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:25:47 +0000

If you’re willing to slice a book, then definitely the best way is to just use a sheet-fed scanner. It will probably go a little slower than a camera-based scanner, but you will end up with perfectly aligned scans in the end. Of course, if you’re not willing to slice a book…

Anyway, go ahead and join the diybookscanner community, and ask away! It’s not just for the DIY Book Scanner, but for anyone scanning books.

By: Dave Green - Compnetdoc

Dave Green - Compnetdoc — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:20:07 +0000

I have been doing book scanning/rescue for 10 years, using Canon DR5080C scanners (I have some mods to improve paper feed of thin pages and improve feed reliability) and a hydraulic paper cutter that can debind a phone book clean. I’m rescuing A Full library of semiconductor databooks from the 70s on, including early computing, s-100 Etc.
An automated system is a dream i am still chasing, i am encouraged by these efforts and no longer feel like i’m the only one doing it!
holler if you use DR-5080C Scanners and ill fix you up with a mod that will make things work MUCH better.
My book scanning is done without funding or pay of any kind, i am trying to figure out how to get help in the process, has anyone figured out how to get help in the scanning process from the local community? I have 150 Milk crates that need to be scanned….

drd

By: Kenneth Brantley

Kenneth Brantley — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:29:38 +0000

I designed my camera set-up in 2007. While it has been affective, I believe some of your designs would be more effcient for what we are doing. We went to Southampton County, VA in early 2009 and digitized 56,000 pages of old court documents in 3 weeks. We have distributed the images all over the US to volunteers for indexing. We have already indexed 630,000 names. This is the first county in US history to have this done, but we are hoping others will see the advantage of this and follow suit, causing further research capability for genealogist and historians.

Would love to talk to someone there and get some advice.

Ken Brantley
President: The Brantley Association of America.

By: Robert B

Robert B — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:28:19 +0000

Ah… I had been looking for a good transform. A 2nd-order polynomial in x seemed to work fine for mild curviness, and higher order polynomials tended to be poorer fits. I had not hit upon your equation!

By: Don Lancaster

Don Lancaster — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:07:28 +0000

Some possible book scanning “gutter math” appears at http://www.tinaja.com/glib/gutter01.pdf