Post something about yourself here (The Hello Thread)

[daniel_reetz]

Hey all, I'm Daniel, the maker of the book scanner instructable http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Hig ... d-Cheap-C/.

I'm a grad student in visual neuroscience studying low-level vision. Have a passion for books, cameras, and weird food.

Autophile and I will be your moderators/administrators. w00t~!

[rob]

Hey all, I'm Rob (Autophile on instructables), your benevolent dictator with the iron fist. I have been scanning my books for several years now, primarily because I have several thousand science fiction paperbacks taking up too much space. I would slice the text block out of the book, and feed the pages through a Fujitsu ScanSnap. Of course, I didn't do this to any of the hardcovers. A small part of me died every time I took knife to book.

A few months ago, I saw the DIY Book Scanner instructables page that Dan put up, and immediately built one, adding my observations to the comments. Lately I've scanned a 670 page book in 30 minutes, which wouldn't have been possible without the book scanner. And, the book is undamaged! Hooray!

I've also been working on postprocessing software. Dan & Aaron have theirs, but I like Java for portability so I wrote my own

--Rob

[james415]

Hello All,

My name is James. Also known as james415 on instructables and pretty much everywhere else. I am currently a grad student and Harvard working on my thesis on computational theory, an engineer for Lockheed Martin, raconteur and man about town.

I am currently leading a grassroots movement for the glass platen revolution and we hope to someday soon overthrow Dan and his Lexan republic.

On a serious note, I hope to see some good ideas and innovations come out of these forums. It is important to remember that information is the foundation society is built on. We need to preserve and spread knowledge to all who would consume it.

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

Cheers,
James

[jradi]

Hi all! My name is John, I go by jradi pretty much everywhere on the net.

I've been scanning books since 01, patiently using a slow epson flatbed about 15 seconds per 2 pages (pushed down hard on the platen). It wasn't a pretty job, but I just wanted to be able to read my books electronically. I first fell in love with ebooks with the original Rocket Ebook (REB1100), by Gemstar http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=15&TBToolID=1067. I still own a few of them but their Li-ion batteries won't stay charged for long. Since then I've owned and used the Franklin ebook, Handspring, Palms, Sony palm, Dell handheld, iphone and the Amazon Kindle. By far, my favorite remains the REB1100, but the kindle is a pretty sweet device. Still, because my iphone is always with me, it remains the device most used.

As for profession, ironically, I'm an intellectual property attorney. As far as I know, there hasn't been any case law directly on point about scanning books. I have a feeling that the courts would be ok with it, so long as you don't post your converted material online. I'm actually thinking about researching and writing an article on the topic, I'd love to get some feedback from you guys when I get around to it. (First build scanner, then scan books, then read and enjoy a few books, then get around to the article)...

[spamsickle]

The first book I scanned was probably back in '90 or '91. I was interested in computer graphics at the time, and saw the title referenced in some research paper, but it was already out of print, and online used book searches hadn't been invented yet. When my job took me to Washington D.C. to staff an event my company was hosting, I took advantage of the situation to visit the Library of Congress, which I'd heard had a copy of every book ever printed. Don't know if that's true or not, but they had the one I wanted, Patterns in Nature. I spent two hours feeding nickels into the LOC Xerox, and came home with my own copy of the book, which I had perfect bound at Kinkos.

I haven't really scanned more than a couple of dozen books since then, but in the past 15 years I've moved 4 times, and boxing up and hauling around the thousands of books I've accumulated is getting to be an expensive chore.

When the binding fell apart on my original Gravity's Rainbow paperback, I bought a ScanSnap to convert it to an ebook, but it's hard for me to deliberately destroy a book just to run it through that device. I'd been using a flatbed scanner too, but then my flatbed started putting yellow streaks in the scans, and I started looking around for an alternative. The Plustek Opticbook is one option (< $250), but then I saw Dan's $300 DIY project. I think I built mine for under $50, because I had the cameras, tripods, 1/4" acrylic, and lumber laying around, and just bought lights and 1/16" acrylic (plus Weld-on and applicator).

I'm happy with the results, though I've only scanned 8 books so far. The process is much faster than the flatbed scanner (though not as fast as the ScanSnap), and the final product is better than the flatbed too (though again, IMO, not quite as good as the ScanSnap, which also does OCR, something I'm not doing in my DIY system yet).

[Cabe]

Greeting from Portsmouth, UK!

Names Gregg AKA Cabe in various places on the intertubes.

I have been reading ebooks on my PC for some time, but it all kicked off big time when I bought my Sony eReader and now I havn't read a pbook in months.

Whilst a majority of my books are in storage (and readily scannable) I decided my time would be better spent building a reprocradle rather than about 10 bookshelf's.

Many thanks for doing the legwork with that 'ible not only is it the funniest I have read it is also the most complete, as someone who finds ikea instructions challenging I am glad of this

Cheers!

[Xymenah]

Hi everyone! I am really excited to have found this forum. A bit about me. My name is Denise but online I go by Xymenah (Kai Mee Nah) I live in British Columbia, Canada. I have recently graduated with a diploma in Animal Health Technology and will be writing a national board exam next week (studying is not going so well unfortunately). I however am not really sure that is what I want to do. I previously finished half a degree in archaeology before I changed my mind (this was mainly due to not being able to get the courses i needed even though I was a declared major). I have always loved books. I have a decent collection myself but nothing nearly as impressive as my aunt's library in her house (literally, she has that many). I have in the last year taught myself book binding (I do copic stitch no spine journals for myself and family and friends for the fun of it when I have time). I have also in the last year taken on the role of family historian for both sides of my family and have several family documents that I have been trying to 'scan' and document and learn how to preserve them. This is what got me started in the last week searching for safe scanning devices for these items. It turns out that using the digital camera to photograph them was the best choice after all however my method was awkward and I didnt have a good place to set up and so on. This search got me to over head scanners and book scanners. Since I have a few book like items in the documents that need to be scanned the V shaped book scanner caught my eye and so the search started. I recently found a professional book scanner by Atiz that is very similar to the design used here. I got brave and emailed them for a quote of course it was rediculously expensive even just for the base so that was unfortunately out. I knew the next step would be to make my own. I emailed them back asking out of pure curiousity if they sold just their software which unfortunately they do not. So in looking for ideas on how I could possibly put togther my own I came across the instructables page for the DIY Book Scanner and linked to the forum from there. So now with looking at plans from here and looking at pictures of the Atiz ones I think I will be able to figure out how to build one in the way I like it. I am quite excited to build this as I love woodworking and building things, I think I will drag my brother in on the project as he will enjoy building stuff as well. I will then have to figure out software to use that will work with books and documents. (At somepoint I will be arranging and printing pictures of the documents and possibly binding them into a book so I can have access to the historical documents without directly handling them and damaging them, also family members have been wanting copies of these things as well). Anyway I guess I have once again typed a novel. I have a habit of doing that. I am happy to have found this group and I look foward to learning more about constructing the book scanner and everything else to go with it. Thank you.

[rob]

I put together a 150 page family history book, but I just printed it all out on my laser printer and then perfect-bound it, sandwiched it between thick cardboard covered in bookcloth, stuck a few nice labels on, and done!

[JotaPe]

Hello all, here Juan from Spain.

[nalfonso]

Hello, eveyone:

I am an English-Spanish translator living in my home country, Colombia. I enjoy tinkering with projects such as this. I am seriously considering building my own version. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Regards,

nalfonso