My partner and I have been talking about moving in together for a while now which would me moving into his house. I live in the apartment building behind his house now and the thought of moving is a bit daunting and space is one of the issues we’re discussing. Besides my furniture, the next biggest thing taking up real estate is my songbook collection. I’ve got about 1200 books organized nicely on the wire shelves and always within reach when I want to play. The idea of paring it down even in half is of no interest to me. So, my thought is to digitize them and put them in storage. Some are the run of the mill books, but some are quite valuable (Frank Zappa, OMD, Laura Nyro are a couple of the rare ones).
I’m thinking that scanning them into .PDF files, one for each book, would be best. But I don’t know what’s a good scanner for this. The issue is part because the size of the pages in sheet music is actually larger than the standard 8.5"*11". Also, the idea of slicing these books open to scan is also a bit mortifying. But if there’s a way to do this and reassemble the book to its near original condition, I’m open for it.
I could be missing some ideas, so I’m looking for advice on how to best to do this, what’s the best equipment/software to use to do this as well.
(I’m assuming that this is ok since I’m keeping the books, but if this is in violation of copyright laws, please lock this thread).