Digitisation of books may be performed using traditional flatbed scanners. There are also some dedicated devices optimised for the purpose of book scanning. Book scanners and scanning robots allow to automate the process of book scanning. Scanning robots perform (see Figure 1 and 2) all the scanning on their own, and the operator just has to place a book on a scanner (in a book cradle) and initialize the scanning process. Scanning robots are great, but they are also very expensive tools; ordinary book scanners are cheaper but it does not mean that they are affordable for a small institution.
Figure 1: Video is showing ScanRobot SR300 in action.
Figure 2: Video is showing another scanning robot QiScan RBSpro.
Nevertheless, scanning using a book scanner is much more efficient than using a traditional flatbed device. Considering its high price some people started to think how to build a book scanner using affordable components. The results are pretty amazing: do-it-yourself (DIY) book scanners were used for preparing books for Internet Archive and Google Books. There is a whole community around a DIY book scanner; if you are interested in how to build such a device or you want to learn more, go to http://www.diybookscanner.org/. Figure 3 presents a video showing the history and realisation of the DIY scanner idea.
Figure 3: Idea and implementation of a DIY book scanner [
As scanning by means of a book scanner is fast (20 minutes for one books) there are some studies which are aiming at speeding up this process. Check out the video in Figure 4 which shows book flipping scanning works.
Figure 4: Book flipping scanning in action.