How to Make a Full Auto Book Scanner

http://www.geocities.jp/takascience/lego/fabs_en.html

by llambda • 13 years ago

87 47 13 years ago

stfu2• 13 years ago

I just love having all my books searchable, I use http://1dollarscan.com/ quite regularly for this purpose. It keeps these things really simple, esp. because it still takes me with regular book scanners (the non fully-automated ones) about half an hour scanning a 300 page book.

KeithMajhor• 13 years ago

I'd never heard of them before. I wonder if they keep the old scans and resell duplicate books. They could make a bunch of extra money on half.com or similar. Depending on how they're scanning the books it'd also save time. Then again, it could be that they're required to destroy the scanned book in order for it to be legal.

breathesalt• 13 years ago

Having run a textbook scanning service (http://www.ptrfy.com/) for a while now, I can say assuredly that keeping master digital copies or the physical processed books is a substantial legal liability.

dbaupp• 13 years ago

The process to digitise it they use ends up partially destroying the book; at least, it removes the spine ("step 2" of http://1dollarscan.com/works.php). They do mention that they keep the book around for 2 weeks (to allow rescans) but then they recycle it.

However, doing some more research, it seems that for certain items they can return it:

  Q. Are books ever returned?

  A. First of all, please understand that we do NOT return 
  any books after they are scanned. The books are recycled 
  after they are cut and this is part of our operation  
  practice.

  The exceptions for returns are for photos, material you 
  wrote yourself, material you own the copyright to and 
  only a few more. If one of these exceptions or a similar 
  exception applies to your order and you want the items 
  returned, then please purchase a return option($5) at the 
  time of your order.

(http://1dollarscan.com/faq.php)

mmahemoff• 13 years ago

Really wish this was around elsewhere. Apparently no such service exists in the UK, so when I purged all my dead trees, I just scanned the bar codes as I didn't have the time to scan the whole books (or figure out how to automate it).

stfu2• 13 years ago

I often buy books directly from amazon.com (even used ones) and get the seller to ship them to 1$scan. By creating an account you get a personal ID and as long that is visible on the address label the book is filed under your account.

WalterBright9• 13 years ago

Most of my books are far too old for bar codes.

dunham• 13 years ago

Wish I knew about these guys a year ago, when I got rid of most of my books to make room for a nursery.

My book search solution is to upload a list of ISBNs to google books and do "search within my library". It doesn't have full coverage, but is better than nothing.

WalterBright9• 13 years ago

I've been scanning my (several thousand books) for over a year now. Using a flatbed scanner is completely impractical at 1 minute per page. I:

1. Use a stack slicer to cut the spine off 2. Feed it through a sheet feeding scanner 3. Check results 4. Do any necessary rescans and stitch the result together with pdftk 5. Chuck the (now destroyed) book into the recycling bin

I have around 60Gb of books now, and have emptied many, many shelves and boxes. It's nice that I can now put my entire library onto my laptop.

It doesn't take that long per book, maybe 5 minutes. The main time-wasters are when a book has damaged pages so the hopper feeder doesn't work right on it, or when the bookbinding glue has spread too far and pages are stuck together beyond where the spine cut was made.

The hopper scanner will scan both sides at once in a couple seconds.

I run the scanner at 400dpi, which is far better than any of the current ereaders will display them. But I figure it's future proofing them. My current ereader of choice is the Kobo Aura that has the retina e-ink display. It's well suited to reading scanned books because:

1. the retina display eliminates the jaggies 2. the glow screen works well in low light conditions 3. the larger screen size is suited to scanned book pages 4. the 32Gb microsd slot enables me to carry around at least half of my library :-)

Luc• 13 years ago

Which scanner are you using, if I may ask?

dewey• 13 years ago

I prefer OPs method of digitalising the books. I'd feel bad for destroying the books and throwing them away instead of giving them away to some charity once I got my digital copy.

WalterBright9• 13 years ago

At first I felt terrible about destroying the books. All I can say is one can get used to anything :-)

What helps is noticing that the vast majority go used on Amazon for less than a buck. Not even charities want to deal with those.

omegant• 13 years ago

5 min per book both sides at the se time makes an impressive scanner. Is it a professional one?

WalterBright9• 13 years ago

Fujitsu fi-5120C

Newer models are available.

For the volume I am doing, professional grade equipment is a must. I also paid around $300 for a used pro stack slicer. Trying to cut the spine off with anything less is just impractical.

shocks• 13 years ago

> 1. Use a stack slicer to cut the spine off

Ouch. This really seems like a shame. I imagine you're not destroying any books of 'value', but still... Something about willingly destroying thousands of books... :/

new299• 13 years ago

I did the same thing, it is depressing, but even more so that it's often the only way to get a decent digital copy of a book:

http://41j.com/blog/2012/02/how-to-get-a-digital-copy-of-the...

ISL• 13 years ago

No need to cut off the spine. Here's how Google Books did it:

http://hackaday.com/2012/11/16/google-books-team-open-source...

Hackaday's first image tells the whole story, but direct link here: https://code.google.com/p/linear-book-scanner/

ics3• 13 years ago

Are you in the US and if so, on/near the East coast by any chance? I might have a use for a large batch of sliced pages...

pavel_lishin2• 13 years ago

Might be easier calling your local schools and asking if they're getting any new textbooks, and whether you can have the old ones.

jakerocheleau• 13 years ago

Is there any benefit to cutting the spine vs using heat to loosen the glue and remove the pages manually?

I have been doing this with old video game strategy guides for about 6 months now. To me it provides a better solution because I still have the spine and all the content which is printed very close to the book's seam. It does take a LOT longer to scan page-by-page, but I also get to keep the single pages instead of throwing them away.

I have also tried using an exacto knife but the results aren't as clean. I am still waiting for a better solution and your comment certainly does make me think.

WalterBright9• 13 years ago

Cutting the spine is quick and easy. Even if you remove the glue by some method, the pages are still sewn together. I have thousands of books to go through, so being fast is important.

Yes, it can be a problem with some pages that are printed very close to the spine. I keep an eye out for those and handle them separately. That's usually only an issue for paperbacks from the 50's and earlier.

greggman• 13 years ago

Most business level copy machines will quickly scan hundreds or thousands of pages, both sides, and assemble into a PDF. If I was going to do this, yes, I would slice the spine off and either scan at work or rent a machine. I don't have any rare books. Just books I've collected over the years.

Unfortunately most of them are art/architecture books. I'd really like to have very high res original source ebooks. By very high-res I mean I'd like to have say 300dpi or higher at the size of the book or larger. I'm imagining having full color e-ink or some other awesome tech in the next 10 years that lets me view large coffee table art books at their original size or larger and unfortunately I think scanning them, even in high-res would not really do them justice.

Imagining full wall displays it would be awesome to be able to view architectural pictures wall size and not have them look lo-res and blurry.

miles• 13 years ago

For fully automated, non-destructive scanning of rare books and the like, check out the APT BookScan 2400: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjm6dBNlPug

These guys (no affiliation) offer scanning services using the 2400: http://www.merrittgraphics.com/services/scanning/bookscan.ph...

clebio• 13 years ago

That's awesome, how much ... wait, 'call us... download our credit application'?? Ouch, must be pricey.

hdevalence• 13 years ago

According to some documents I found with Google, one of those machines costs something like 100,000-120,000€.

italophil• 13 years ago

Ha, who knew. Geocities lives on in Japan.

michaelmior• 13 years ago

That was the first thing I noticed about this post! :)

GICodeWarrior• 13 years ago

This scanner design from last year is pretty neat too. https://code.google.com/p/linear-book-scanner/

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

Talking of scanning machines, this is pretty cool:

http://youtu.be/W1-2DmDmZgI

parkov• 13 years ago

Spooky, by pure coincidence that video uses the same book (different edition) for their demo that my blog post does for 1DollarScan:

http://thomaspark.me/2012/12/digitizing-books-on-the-cheap-a...

pasbesoin2• 13 years ago

Partially OT: For people using Canon compact cameras together with the CHDK firmware in DIY imagers/scanners, which models are preferred these days? My A640 was stolen and I've been wondering what to replace it with.

markvdb• 13 years ago

Hi! You want to look at the Canon PowerShot A810.

That is what we currently ship our kits with at http://diybookscanner.eu .

How to Make a Full Auto Book Scanner

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