I have a bunch of old data books that I refer to very infrequently, but I am loth to get rid of. Things like National’s 1986 Linear Applications Databook. I found three of them already scanned on-line, so I downloaded those, and recycled the originals. But, I have a shelf full of other books that i would like to scan. Does anyone know how to contact a hobbyist or service close to me that could scan these for a reasonable price (or lend me their scanner so I could do it myself)?
My WAG is that most legit businesses would not do this because of the copyright problems. Maybe you have a friend whose computer printer is also a scanner?
The Internet Archive boasts “many scanning centers across the globe”. I don’t know what they would charge you for a public reference book.
Copyright is a separate issue to scanning it. Some things on the Internet Archive are restricted (you can view online but not download the PDF, or you agree to certain terms before downloading like “for educational use only”), but I can’t imagine National Semiconductor (or TI or whoever) would want to restrict downloads of data books, exactly the opposite if you are doing their work for them.
NB doing such scans yourself using a flat-bed scanner is not so bad, unless you are talking about multiple volumes and thousands of pages. You also need to know how to process the raw image files into a nice PDF with distortion removed, page numbers added, OCR, etc. Paying however many cents per page is not always a bad idea.
If you are not in a hurry start looking at the free or computer sections of Craigslist. I got my scanner free that way. But I was watching for about six months.
I agree with DPRK that scanning it yourself can be done, but not if you have many pages and you really want the final product look good. I completed a 20 page scan-and-convert-to-PDF effort a few days ago. EACH page took one minute to line up and scan, and perhaps three minutes to clean up using an image editing tool. A lot of work for 20 pages but worth it. But 200 pages? No thanks.
I have a flatbed scanner.
But, these data books are thousands of pages. I need a much faster system.
And, DPRK, that’s where I found three of the books in my library, but I have many others.
I have used The Office Lens app free on iPhone and it does a great job of scanning pages, straightening them and converting them to pdf : all in one click. The only problem is a limit of 10 pages per pdf with the free version.
Take a look into the app or other similar apps.
There are many online businesses that do scans. Just mail them the books and they’ll cut off the spine and run them through a scanner, and send you a PDF.
Possibly your public library has a scanner that can scan and directly produce PDF. All the libraries in my county have that. They charge for printed copies. I don’t know if it’s completely free to just scan as many pages as you want. It’s a totally manual system, so it’s just one-page-at-a-time. Check your library and see what they have.
ETA: Depending on how old your books are, copyright might not be an issue.
The only way to really increase your scanning throughput is to rip the book apart and then feed the stacked pages through a copy-scanner as if it was separate sheets. If you are only interested in black and white or grey-scale text then that would produce a fairly small PDF, but this rapidly turns into an unwieldy size with colour, so maybe do each chapter as a separate document.
It does not avoid the issue of pages looking like crap on the screen (just like someone photocopied a book they’d previously ripped apart). If its an occasional reference then that may not be an issue.
Having done this myself, I should just add that you should not literally ‘rip the book apart’ as the previous idiot suggested. Cut with scissors or a scalpel for a neat edge otherwise you’ll have to unclear a printer jam every four sheets.
Its likely that your public library has a copier-scanner that will do the trick, but would be worth telling the librarian what you are doing and its not one of their books.
I don’t have an issue cutting these books apart, but they are printed on very thin, almost phonebook-weight paper.
I wonder if a sheet-fed scanner can handle thin paper like that.
For lightweight paper a clean leading edge is vital. A high volume page scanner should be able to feed it. (If you do this yourself, do small [100 page] batches and fan the leading edge of the paper.)
If you have more than one book and you decide to cut them apart you might take them to a local small printing company and ask them to use their paper cutter to trim off the spine. They might go for it, and if you ask nice, maybe for free.
Edit: no printer will cut them if they are hardbound. I was thinking paperback or tradeback books.
I used to work in a place with a complex printing “office services” department. When I started there in about 1980 they had an offset(?) press for printing forms forms forms. One feature then never got rid of was a giant paper cutter. It featured a blade about 15 inches wide that could slice through up to 3 or 4 inches of (clamped) stacked paper.
As I understand it, this is what services like Google books did. They would slice the binding off a book as close to the edge as was feasible. Then they would feed the pages through a scanner - something any multifunction copier can do nowadays. The risk, of course, is that a page jams and tears, or as the OP alludes, it’s possible the paper cannot be handled by the sheet feeder. There’s only one way to find out - too bad you recycled the old books you found copies of. Otherwise, I would suggest that you test if you have a duplicate - slice the back binding off, and use the scan-to-PDF option on a convenient office scanner. Depending on how the sizing works, you may need to scan a chapter at a time. (I found online a copy of Asimov’s guide to the Bible as images not text, PDF, about 22MB for 1300 pages) there are also OCR programs, but if it’s math and formulas it’s less easily converted to text.
(Google books also had options to scan rare books by photographing each page spread then running custom software to correct images for the distortion near the spine of the book, smart OCR algorithms to learn from corrections. But - typesetting math formulas is an art in itself.)