[OpenGLAM] Book scanners?

Tue Feb 11 00:20:51 UTC 2014

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 6:12 AM, Ben Laurie <ben at links.org> wrote:

> Does anyone on this list have any book scanner recommendations (or the
> opposite)? Budget around £10,000...

You'd probably get a few more suggestions if you spelled out your
requirements in a little more detail.  High volume? (what's high volume to
you?) Low volume? Destructive or non-destructive? Fragile books?  What size
books? etc, etc  Even little things like giving your budget in a commonly
understood currency could help.

An organization that has a lot of experience with book scanning is the
Internet Archive.  They document their scanning stations on the website,
but I think they're a proprietary design that they haven't released.  The
design process does document some additional interesting parameters such as
robotic page turning vs hand page turning vs single page (such as the model
Rupert Thurner posted).

If you're interested in some level of DIY, then
http://www.diybookscanner.org/ is a good resource.

If you're open to a service instead of a product, then Internet Archive
(and about a bazillion commercial firms) will do it for you:
http://archive.org/scanning
but you need to worry about transporting your source materials.

If you flesh out your query a bit, I'm sure others will able to offer
additional suggestions.

Tom
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