From 26C3 Public Wiki
DIY Book Scanner
How to build your own Book Scanner [in 4 min]
(File:Diybookscanner lightningtalk.pdf)
Some scanners build by the community are shown. Their contruction ranges from simple to advanced. They follow the basic design principle of one or more cameras capturing pictures from pages of the partially opened book (V-shape). Until now, the page flipping is done manually.
Motivation:
- full-text-search
- Saving family history documents
- Format-shifting for the print-disabled
- Archiving rare books
- Annoyed at the space a huge collection of physical books occupies
- Appalled at the prices for college text books
- Increasing access to out-of-copyright works from libraries
- A cheaper, more book-friendly method of scanning
- A mobile alternative to hundreds of pounds of reference books
Most parts of this list are from http://halfbakedmaker.org/2009/12/01/book-scanning/
No everyone who is interested, needs to build such a device. It's a good idea to gather interested people and combine ressources to set up a book scanning device in your area (hackerspaces?).
- Examples of open Challenges
- on the hardware side
- portablility
- automated page flipping while ensuring the safety of the book
- on the software side
- digital image post/pre-processing (remove artifacts caused by geometry)
- OCR in general needs a lot of improvement and needs to be free/open
- on the hardware side