I am guessing that many people might want to have their lecture notes digitized. But many people might also be too lazy to make a New Years resolution of scanning each page of notes every day. So, would it make sense for some of the students (perhaps with assistance from casual, low wage employees if there is too much physical work) to run a low key business of scanning and organizing notes for their classmates?
Have you ever heard of things like that being done?
I have been out of college for a while and I am sure that such a thing has been done somewhere but most great business models have more primitive predecessors that didn’t do as nearly as well. Back in my day, fraternity houses had files of notes (and even stolen tests) from classes that changed little from year to year (I was never in a frat BTW but I saw the files).
That is actually a pretty good idea for a web based business that could take off and I mean that sincerely. Good note takers could publish their notes to share and then people that aren’t good note takers or who missed class altogether could buy them for a small fee. It sounds pretty ethical to me.
It’s faster to take a picture of each page with a run-of-the-mill digital camera, than to scan them.
In my Japanese lessons, we are encouraged to take pictures of the whiteboard at the end of each lesson. Comes in quite handy.
Perhaps faster, but scanner with a sheet feeder is easier…
These days most college students have laptops, and those who really want digital notes just type them in as they go. There are some professors who don’t allow laptops. There are also some things, like chemical equations, that probably don’t lend themselves too well to typed notes. So someone, somewhere might pay for that service, but using laptops to type notes will limit the market somewhat.
Along this line, there’s Take Note, which was started in 1985. They publish one set of notes that students can purchase; they don’t scan your notes for you.