Anyone else here scan books in their entirity?

RemadERemadE Global Moderator
edited April 2012 in Spurious Generalities
I was in the Library yesterday, doing some much-needed quiet work, and before I knew it I had taken out a 33-page book on drug use in Britain. It was mostly reports and from 1979, so quite rare. It's for my Dissertation.
Getting home I decided that instead of copying out every damn page and taking up space in my Pukka Pad, I'd scan it. The whole process was a lot easier than I thought, but I just need to work on size, as the finished PDF file was the same as all the images scanned (nearing 48MB).

Anyone else do this? I would have rather cut the spine and done it in an automated way, but after rotating, cropping and putting them into a PDF with the freeware "PDF Creator", I was pleasantly surprised. Felt a bit of a pirate :)

Comments

  • PsychlonicPsychlonic Regular
    edited November 2011
    I'd like to in order to "give back" but my scanner is shit and I haven't come up with a good process to make the scans passable quality. I think it's really important, knowledge to me is worth more than gold. Truly. Digitizing rare books especially is something I want to take a stab at once I get some better hardware. Knowledge should be free to pass around and I certainly give mine where I see appropriate to give, so I don't feel too bad about the piracy issue. Novels and entertainment is one thing, I can understand the need to make a living off of it. But no sense in commercializing knowledge that can help everyone live a better life.
  • white88enochianwhite88enochian Regular
    edited November 2011
    well if i had the hardcopy of the book id rather read that if i had the hand scanner i might do this i have over 300 hardcover books im about to get some german books from 1770s till 1800s and a german bible from 1776 and if its the one i thing it is its the first bible in america and ive seen it on line for 6500
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited November 2011
    I have not owned a scanner in years.
  • SlartibartfastSlartibartfast Global Moderator -__-
    edited November 2011
    I always have an impulse to do this to dusty manuals i find in the back of uni libraries. You just know they're going to be thrown out.

    To do it with any speed you need to splice the spine and put the individual pages into a feeder in one of those networked xeroxes. It's how most books are pirated.
  • LethargicaLethargica Regular
    edited December 2011
    Unless the copier is free of charge...i would totally do it (but in many cases..isn't and i don't own a copier) but i do however purchase the lesser versions of the book..which have the exact same content, just on a different page number..for LESS THAN 2 bucks..and a textbook now a days ranges from like what? 40-200 bucks??
  • MorningsideMorningside Regular
    edited April 2012
    I scanned and uploaded a bunch of books to theoccult.bz to raise my ratio (invite plz, banned again). Its a pretty mindless task, I could drink beer and finish about 3 a day. I got to really like editing them to make the pdf look good.
  • white88enochianwhite88enochian Regular
    edited April 2012
    android has apps like scan to pdf that takes nice pictures of each paige and turns it into a pdf finished it looks pretty nice
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