Automatic book scanner

[Scott Stevens]

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:05:38 -0000
"a.carlini at ntlworld.com" <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote:

> While following a discussion on /. I came across
> this interesting book scanner:
> 
> http://www.kirtas-tech.com/
> 
> Only 1200 pages/hour but it looks like you can 
> load it up and let it scan a whole batch. Which
> is just as well as I suspect it is not that cheap!
> 
> Anyone ever seen one in action? Any idea when
> they'll be starting to throw them out :-)
> 

It certainly looks somewhat more 'humane' to the books than many of the big scanning operations that libraries have unleashed on their collections.

In many cases, books or publications are guillotined (the back of the binding just sliced off) and the individual pages scanned, then the original books are reduced to pulp.  There are even cases where the return from sale and disposal of said materials are used to justify the expensive of making the mediocre digital images.

This is barbaric, and processes like this should be regarded as vandalism, not the preservation of libraries.  I have done similar things in the past, when I was enthralled with the fetishistic notion that 'digital image copies' were the way to go.  I sliced and scanned a bunch of my early Circuit Cellar INK volumes.  Now I have some mediocre PDFs on aging CDs somewhere and wish I had the original magazines back.

This kind of thing is why some of us aren't very enthusiastic about projects like the big Google "Make bad scans of the entire world's book" project.  Ultimately, the project will be handed off to mediocre middle managers, to rip and shred much of our historical record.

This 'page turner' method looks interesting and somewhat hopeful, but there are numerous books on my bookshelves that have to be read with VERY gentle hands, which machines like this will doubtless still be unleashed at by uncaring library bureaucrats.

> Antonio
> 
> --
> 
> Antonio carlini
> arcarlini at iee.org
> 
>