We are a community of people crazy enough to build our own book scanners. We also write Free software for book scanning. We are the missing link between your bookshelf and your e-reader. Join us! Get involved by trying a simple scanner, or push the limits of scanning technology.
DIY Book Scanner Forums.

We are launching a new project to put Open Hardware Book Scanners in every community in the world, starting with hackerspaces. Please enter your email here for more information. You will receive an email when the design files become available, and you will be notified of any meaningful progress.

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Do-It-Yourself Book Scanning is using cheap, compact cameras and Free software to scan books quickly and efficiently. DIY Book Scanners can be as simple as a camera and a piece of glass [PDF] or as involved as the Instructable that brought our community together [PDF / Vimeo]. We've come a long way since then. We have GPL-licensed laser cut designs, aluminum designs, and detailed instructions for beginners. We have built hundreds of scanners and freely shared thousands of design improvements. We are the most open, sharing, and productive scanner building community on the 'net, and we're looking forward to meeting you in the Hello Thread, where our members tell their stories and reasons for getting involved.

TL;DR - Point a camera at a book and take pictures of each page. You might build a special rig to do it. Process those pictures with our free programs. Enjoy reading on the device of your choice.

Oh, there's so much we could talk about. May we start with a little bragging? DIY Book Scanner is notorious as an example of Open Innovation - that means that you, as a member of this community, are the one doing the important work of innovation and invention. Who recognizes this?

Well, how about The New York Times?
Or the BBC?
Or David Bollier of OnTheCommons, who wrote "DIY Book Scanning Takes Off".
Harry Lewis, author of Bits Book wrote "Do It Yourself Book Scanning".
Priya Ganapti of Wired wrote "DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes".
James Simmons wrote a FLOSS Manual using DIY Book Scanner Technology "Reading and Sugar".
There are also many hundreds of blog posts out there.

In fact, HUNDREDS of people have built their own version of a DIY Book Scanner. That's why it's called DIY - Do It Yourself. Along the way, we have learned a LOT about what makes a scanner good or bad, and where the hard problems are. But we don't know everything - which is why we're looking for your contribution. But after two years of development, we are also working on a kit that anyone can reproduce. There will be more information on that coming in the next few weeks. KITS ARE NOT AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME AND THERE IS NO ESTIMATED DATE OF ARRIVAL. For now, you'll have to build your own.

Who are these hundreds of people?? Might be better to ask what they're doing. DIY Book Scanners have been used to:
  • Prepare books for upload to the Internet Archive and Google Books.
  • Scan medical records in Haiti.
  • Open up space in sagging bookshelves.
  • Make book collections more portable and accessible.
  • Preserve historical documents.
  • Preserve village Holy Books in Indonesia.
  • Digitize atlases of the far north of Ontario.
  • Help print-impaired people read.

...and about a zillion other things. As we've learned, there are as many reasons to build book scanners as there are books and book lovers.


More? OK!

Unlike traditional scanners (which are slow, buggy, and break book bindings) DIY Book Scanning is fast and gentle. DIY Book Scanning re-imagines photocopying. In essence, it is simply pointing a camera at a page, and taking a picture. To be honest, most of us use two cameras because it's twice as fast - up to 1200 pages per hour. Since we've only got two hands, we build special frames to hold the lights, cameras, and other specialized parts while we turn pages and take pictures. All those page-pictures need post-processing. We have two excellent Free software packages -- one called Book Scan Wizard and one called Scan Tailor to clean the pages up in just a few clicks. After that, they can be converted into the format of your choice, and read on the device of your choice.

Though designs vary substantially, DIY Book Scanners have roughly the following parts:

A picture showing the various parts of a DIY Book Scanner

  1. Lighting. Cheap cameras need a lot of light, and postprocessing is easier if the light is bright and uniform. We have setups for halogens, CFLs, and LEDs.
  2. Camera support. Cameras need to be placed opposite the page. Postprocessing is vastly easier if the cameras don't move.
  3. Platen. The platen is the "page-flattener". It is a V-shaped construction of glass, acrylic, or even Gorilla Glass. Flat pages are easier to process (and in fact, usable with no post-processing. Good input equals good output!).
  4. Cradle. The cradle holds the book, gently, and accommodates the spine of the book.
  5. Base. The base holds all the other stuff together.
  6. Electronics. Many of us build a simple system to trigger our cameras electronically using Stereo Data Maker.
Do you still have questions, or are you ready to get started? Then join us in the forums, we are waiting for you!