Let the scanning begin
byAs comes the end of summer, so comes the beginning of scanning. Are those of us who partake in this endless task of scanning book after book mad? Insane? Bored? Without a social life? OK, possibly, HOWEVER, we have our reasons.
Right now I am sitting in an apartment, far away from family and friends, in a town where the only place to hang-out is Subway, and the word “wireless” has yet to reach the local’s ears.
I do NOT want to spend time that I’m at home around family and friends working longer than I need to on homework or studying, or huddled in my room with the scanner by my side on a Friday night. Scanning and OCR-ing my books allows me to be more productive during the school year. So what if it means I spend the day or two flipping pages and pressing scan. The benefits of 1000+ pages of searchable text, the freedom of studying whenever and where ever I get a chance, and extra mobility I gain by dropping about 30 lbs of books is WELL worth the effort.
Not only does scanning my books let me have more free time later, but that free time means that if I need to, I can spend more time studying when it counts. If I have a test that’s freaking me out, if I have homework due in thirty minutes, if I have a class that is INSANE, I can get more studying done in less time because I’m well organized and ready for action.
No, scanning doesn’t save you time in the long run (unless you have a really fast scanner), but it saves you time when it matters most. That’s all I’m trying to say here.
My next couple posts will likely be on scanning and digital books because that’s what I’m currently messing with. I have two books right now, one that’s 750 pages and one that’s 900 pages. I’m guessing with my way of scanning (OpticBook + Acrobat) that will be about 8-10 hours of work. Not too shabby, but still quite the effort ^_^.
Other posts that may interest you:
Do keep your scanned documents as Word documents of PDF?
August 8th, 2006 at 10:44 pmyesterday I “scanned” two books totaling 1000 pages, in about 1:30 hours. I did it with a canon a620 that can be controlled by the pc directly, and has 7MP. (the canon’s are the only in the market with this ability, great for this kind of work) I put it looking up below a cristal table, and 2 fluorecent tubes in 2 chairs on the sides. I put some marks on the glass and started the scaning as a photocopier. I got a rate of 15 to 20 pages per minute. And great quality. I will post some pictures and a better description of my process in the future.
August 10th, 2006 at 8:57 pmsorry I didn’t say that the canon powershot a620 is a GREAT digital camera. the best in his price range.
August 10th, 2006 at 9:00 pmJay - I go PDF ^_^. I like to keep it looking like the original pages as much as possible.
Mazzorca - That sounds awesome! Definitely let me know if/when you post more details!
August 10th, 2006 at 10:31 pmI’m starting graduate school this fall for an MBA. I’m contemplating chopping the bindings off my books and scanning them. I’ve got access to a copier at work that can scan to PDF, and it’s a whole lot faster than I could do on my little canon flatbed at home. The problem I see with it is that it can only scan black & white (I think). I wonder if that’s going to be a problem with stuff like color graphs & such being readable. Anybody have experience with this?
August 11th, 2006 at 3:33 pmUsually graphs turn out readable, but images end up as just big black and white blobs. It it’s a highly visual book with lots of images and diagrams, you may want to reconsider. But then also consider how much you’ll actually use the color images and diagrams. Is it really worth all that extra work?
August 15th, 2006 at 1:11 pmsafarix.com? etextbooks that you can get online…. obviously for the books you can get online. My school’s library also offers a large variety of ebooks and etextbooks but for those of us who don’t have elibraries available there is netlibrary which I believe is a free service your local public library can hook up to. There is also elibrary.com. I’m sure Tracy has a blog somewhere on this topic but with the paper and the writing and the gah gah of life this is the first time I’ve ever been able to respond to any posts. Oh, the associated press finally ebooked their stylebook for 2006/7 SOOO much more useful! Live updates and everything… back to the presses!
February 16th, 2007 at 7:53 amIs this something you do to keep a “library” or do you delete the book when you have finished?? I immediately got the idea of “portable library” with all my books that I enjoy, or may reference to, but seem to think that would be a pile of memory for each book..say 1000 pages a piece.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:04 amnathan - Just to jumping in on your question. I hope that is ok? Obviously with scanning books the huge issue of copyright infringement raises its head (and not without reason). I generally tend to only keep [b]long term[/b] scans of the books that [b]I[/b] own. I do scan books, chapters etc. from university library books but I delete these as soon as the term has ended. As for storage of my ‘portable library’ well due to the the multitude of cheap high capacity 2.5 inch portable HD’s, flash drives and SD cards etc. storage space hasn’t really proved much of an issue. Size of an e-book of course boils down to the quality of the output but even with uber-sized textbooks at maximum quality (with OCR etc.) I’ve not ended up with anything over a couple of hundred MB’s. Hope that helps
January 8th, 2008 at 8:29 amhi, i’m wondering what the best way of scanning books is at the moment, and what the best scanners/cameras on the market are? Do people on this site think a scanner is better or a camera? I’m thinking about getting one or the other soon.
many thanks!
March 31st, 2008 at 10:17 pmI purchased the ScanSnap s510 and it is an excellent product. Of course, you have to have the binding cut away, but I got that done for eight textbooks at Kinkos for about five bucks. So far I have put about 3,500 sheets through the ScanSnap and have had no problems. It takes about fifty sheets at a time. I have it set up to automatically name the files with the name of the book and a counter so I can combine the files easily later. I have it set up to OCR the scans as it goes and that works wonderfully. At the push of a button searchable PDFs and I can even be doing other things while it runs. Excellent.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:37 pm