Scanning books (was: Stuff Available Ft. Wayne IN

[james]

On Wed, 2004-11-10 at 21:57, Fred Cisin wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, John Allain wrote:
> > I have the paper manual here somewhere.  It's bound (soft) so
> > may be a pain to scan.  It's about time for someone to make an
> > "open book scanner", one with a wedge of glass that you can
> > drop the book onto.  I don't want this binding opened 180° flat.

Xerox and others make photocopiers for this. The glass extends all the
way to the side of the machine and you hang the book on the side. Maybe
someone makes a scanner like this. Check with a very large library or
university library.

Otherwise, the way this is handled is to shear the binding off the book.
You will loose a fraction of an inch of the inside margins. You need a
bulk paper shear, which print shops almost always have. The book can be
re-bound following scanning for a small fee. Just save the covers by
cutting them off the binding before shearing.