Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

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kloosen
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Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by kloosen »

Hi,

so I have read that the Hackerspace, Archivist and Co designs of book scanners have their problems with softcover books since they tend to close up when not pressed against the platen.
Some designs work around this problem by being turned upside down and having the book being lifted and laid page down onto the platen.
The problem with this at least to me would be that it might consume quite some time and the position of the top/bottom part of the book changes ever so slightly all the time.

How about while the platen is not pressing against the pages and one turns to the desired page to be scanned next, while the platen is lowered/book raised one holds down the pages until the hands nearly tough the glass. Then, when the ringers released the pages the platen should be close enough to the spine of the book preventing if from closing.
While the platen presses against the pages the (hopefully) should slide along the glass and settle at angle of the platen (and not getting scrunched due to too much friction between page and platen).

If this is not a solution, why not?
BillGill
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Re: Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by BillGill »

I designed my "Tower Scanner" to do one page at a time while holding the page down on the platen. While it takes a little longer to do the scan I find that I can get better scans on all the books I scan. The problem is that many of my paperback books have very narrow or almost non-existent gutter margins. When I scan one of those the inner edge of the printing is missed. That means I have to correct almost every line on the missed text. Not having to make all those corrections saves me enough time to make up for the time spent changing the pages.

As far as alignment of the page, that isn't a real problem with my design. I set the platen size to contain the biggest page that I expected to scan. Then I set the camera position at a distance that the camera field of view just covers that area. I do not use the cameras zoom feature, I leave it at the normal (1 to 1) zoom setting. That means I don't have to fuss with the camera for each book. The camera faces up and is mounted above a mirror that I use to check the registration of the page before I take the picture. The image usually has some dead space around the text, but the OCR software I use ignores that.

It takes me a half an hour to an hour to scan a book, depending on the size, and whether I turn over 2 pages at once.

Bill
kloosen
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Re: Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by kloosen »

Hi Bill,

I know your design and was intrigued by it but I have built the book shooter MK-V.
The downside with this design is that I cannot get softcover books with (natural) warped pages completely flat resulting in quite uneven illumination thanks to shadows.
If I am going to redesign, I either will be using a thin black metal plate in which I will slide the page to be scanned and press the plate against the glass with the nice side effect that I reduce background bleeding as well.
But I am intrigued by the archivist design being able to photograph two pages at once reducing the duration of the tedious task.
But since I am mostly if not exclusively scanning thick-ish soft cover books I first want to know the drawback and if there is a work around.
No point in spending so much money and time with building an archivist if it is not what I am hoping for.
dpc
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Re: Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by dpc »

This scanner design might make it easier for you to flatten the page if you're going to press a black colored metal plate against the backside of the page. I built a scanner like this years ago and had some success with it. The downside was having to scan all of the odd pages, then all of the even pages. Only needs a single camera though.
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Mohib
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Re: Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by Mohib »

You might want to take a look at this video of the scanner I designed:

viewtopic.php?p=20596#p20596

I scan a softcover book (at time index 2:00) as well as a book with text very close to the spine (at time index 4:00) with no issues.

With my scanner, you do need to scan the right side of the book, flip it over and scan the left side, backwards, but I created some software that handles collating all the images into a sequence. You can find it here:

viewtopic.php?p=20683#p20683

And I just posted the latest version of the software here:

viewtopic.php?p=22479#p22479
kloosen
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Re: Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by kloosen »

dpc wrote: 27 Apr 2022, 01:40 This scanner design might make it easier for you to flatten the page if you're going to press a black colored metal plate against the backside of the page.
Indeed, even though the idea is identical to the scanner I am using, sliding a black colored plate from above would be way easier.
Yet at this point I would prefer scanning two pages at once while the book is quite fixed in position relative to the camera, so the Archivist design is getting most of my interested by now.

Mohib wrote: 30 Apr 2022, 02:15 You might want to take a look at this video of the scanner I designed:

https://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewto ... 596#p20596
Thank you; I already knew your design. While it is and extremely elegant solution to scanning lot's of pages very fast, the post processing would be a huge paint for me because I could not guarantee the pages to be in the same position relative to the camera for every shot.
Many pages have crucial information (pictures) to the very edges of the pages (sadly sometimes even to/into the gutter) resulting in more than 50% of the time in ScanTailor being Deskew and Select Content.

With the Archivist the books should be in the same position for every shot (with two spacers on the cradle to hold the vertical position of the spine) since the platen does not move as does the camera.
This is why I am most interested in the Archivist.
glenleslie
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Re: Archivist & Co. scanning softcover books

Post by glenleslie »

kloosen wrote: 25 Apr 2022, 07:42 Hi Bill,

I know your design and was intrigued by it but I have built the book shooter MK-V.

But I am intrigued by the archivist design being able to photograph two pages at once reducing the duration of the tedious task.
But since I am mostly if not exclusively scanning thick-ish soft cover books I first want to know the drawback and if there is a work around.
No point in spending so much money and time with building an archivist if it is not what I am hoping for.
have you tried vFlat Scan? I have not used it but perhaps the software could be used to help pre-process so there are not so many steps in ScanTailor?

Also, is there a way to set it up so that the book is laying on a table and you are shooting the picture down onto the book (the weight of the device helping to hold your soft cover books flat). You would have to cover what is currently the bottom of the device (maybe put a light in the box just out of the camera's view to help with the illumination problem)?

If you could put a hinge along the new bottom edge and a cabinet handle on the the new "top" of the box, that would allow rotating the box up and turning the page of the book, then putting it back down again. Shoot all of one side of the book and then turning the book and shooting all the other pages of the book. Maybe that's way too much movement though and the pictures would never line up?

For this special project maybe something like this would work better (a special build but maybe special project == special build)? https://diybookscanner.org/forum/viewto ... =14&t=3414

it would be a cheap way to check out the Archivist "V" platen design. It would also allow you to apply more illumination to the project.
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