Scanning Books With A Book Scanner

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In Egypt 2300 years ago, a library was formed called the Library of Alexandria. This library gathered and collected thousands upon thousands of books and written documents throughout the ages. Unfortunately 500 years later, intruders took over the library and burnt the books which took the better part of a single year.

In today's society, the information age, we hope to rebuild this library and capture everything known to man in a single archive. And in fact, Amazon.com is coming close to being like the Royal library and is currently pushing over 1,748,230 book titles. But the real juice behind today's library is that the books are not just in a physical format, but a digital one as well. And they are able to do this with a book scanner.

There are two main options to scan a book. Those are destructive and non-destructive scanning. Destructive scanning is cheap but it involves removing each page from the book. So this is not something you would do for rare or one of a kind books. Non-destructive scanning allows you to keep the book intact and scan the text to a computer.

In the past these tasks were performed by human beings, but now we have technology on our side. In the more recent past, book scanners involved taking a picture of the page and using software to try to figure out the text by using font templates. But in the present, we can even use an iPhone to scan a book.

Most book scanning devices uses something called Optical Character Recognition, or OCR for short. The simplest OCR scanners look like a pen or a wand. The idea is that you wave the pen over the text and it converts it in to digital format to be saved as a .pdf on your computer. There is also something called ICR which a software version of the OCR scanner. This is what you would find in an iPhone that acts as a book scanner, for example.

There are two main types of book scanners today, a wand book scanner or a flatbed book scanner. Let’s look at each of them separately so that you have a better idea of what will suit your particular needs.

Pen or Wand Book Scanner

These book scanners are the cheapest compared to the flatbed scanners. For example, the VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner is about $100 new. As seen in the picture, you basically wave the wand over the page to scan it. This particular scanner captures color, black and white, and pictures.

And the best thing is that it can scan an A4 sized page which means you don’t have to sit there scanning each word, line by line. The only downfall is that it doesn’t come with an extra memory card. It can fit up to a 16GB Micro SD card which is more than enough for most books with images.

Another thing about the VuPoint Wand, and other book scanning wands, is that it is very convenient to scan things no matter where you are. One trick that many students use is to go to the public library, scan the pages they want from the books and load them on to a computer at home. This means there is no worrying about library fees, late returns, or expensive photocopies.

The problem with these types of scanners is that sometimes you can have a bad image scan if you aren’t careful on moving the wand over the page.

Flatbed Book Scanner

If you don’t plan on being mobile and just want to scan a complete book in to .pdf format for your Pocket PC or phone, then a flatbed book scanner is the other option. These scanners are expensive, $200-$700. However there are some other great options.

Many are able to scan in over 175 different languages, 1200 dpi image scans, converts to .pdf with no extra software purchases required, and things get saved to your computer directly so you don’t have to worry about running out of space. And because it will be plugged in to your computer or electrical socket, the scanning speed is much better than a wand. In some cases complete pages can be scanned in 2 seconds.

The disadvantages of this type of book scanner should be obvious but there is something else. You need to look at the reviews by other people on big store websites like Amazon. Some software that comes with them is very bad and no substitute can be used with that particular scanner. Some of the lesser known brands have poor support and bad quality machines that need constant cleaning and adjusting. And for the price, you would expect them to have great service.