DIY Book Scanner

Hello all, my name is Richard and I live in Peoria, IL. I joined the group to gather more information about the oversized scanner. I retired 1 1/2 years ago as a modelmaker at Caterpillar Inc. I became active in the historical society in the little Central IL town of Emden. My Great Grandparents moved there in 1885. The historical society has a fairly complete collection of the town newspaper, dating back to at least 1908. I investigated donating them to The University of IL, but they would not guarantee that they would be microfilmed, and if there was the slightest bit of mildew, the papers would be destroyed. So, I am intent on digitally preserving them myself. There was a lot of local information about wedding anniversaries, parties, and church gatherings. This is the type of information I want to preserve and use to search for family information. My Great Grandfather died in 1936, my Grandfather in 1937. I was born in 1952, so information about those two is scarce. They had a family home fire in 1943, so even pictures are scarce. I will be pouring over information and hope to build in early 2016. Glad to meet you all!

Welcome, Richard. There is definitely a lot of interest in making oversized scanners. While there isn't a standard 'kit' of one out there, a number of builds have been made. Make sure to check these threads:

http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/vie ... =14&t=2976
http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/vie ... =14&t=3008

There have been other build threads as well of people working on large scanners. Best of luck!

-D

Hi all,

First of all I wanted to thank so many of you for sharing so much information, experience, pictures, tips on fixing or avoiding troubles... It really makes this hobby a possibility for me. It would be a very daunting challenge to start from nothing and figure out how to turn a real book into an e-book.

My first "scanner" was a hand held camera taking pictures of a few pages I wanted to read later. Next was a cardboard box cut in half, as I learned here, to flatten the pages a bit and keep the book from closing up so easily. A glass picture frame was soon sacrificed to be my first (half) platen and then I was happily scanning odd pages resting on my cardboard box while I used a loop of masking tape to lift and remove the platen for each page, then starting over to do the even pages in chapter-size batches. Then a tripod made getting the camera in the right place easier for each page. Somewhere along the line I learned about scantailor, spreadpi, and many other wonderful ways to get better results with less time or effort.

I very much enjoyed reading about David Landin's "cheap and cheerful" scanner with counter balanced platen. And Moose's auto-page turning build. Not to mention Daniel's Archivist design pages. I would love to have an Archivist kit to build, but making do the best I can with a shoe string budget is part of the fun.

Hello All,

I'm Arjan. I've been scanning since 2007 as my job is a documentalist/archivist for a local goverment in the Netherlands. This is done on a flatbed or a multifunctional. These machines made it for me possible to digitalize several military manuals. These manuals are small and can be scanned on a flatbed, but the larger manuals and older manuals can not. Therefor I was planning to get or build a bookscanner.

Manuals that I scanned are placed on the internet, so that anyone can use them. The digital manuals made it also possible for me to have always access to the information I need on my cellphone.

My first attempt of a diy-booscanner is in progress and is very basic.

Kind regards,
Arjan

Hello all,
New guy here, just did a couple posts in the Marketplace.

I have a lot of old books that need scanning. Looking for help in the post-processing department.
Been lurking for a year or so and read some great threads. There's some amazing people here, I really admire the creativity.

Look forward to reading more threads and will contribute if I ever have anything of value to share.

Benny

Hello All; Name is Howard - go by How usually. Live in York, Pennsylvania. Been dealing (fixing-repairing-building) with computers for 25+ years.
Also have "in-depth" knowledge in microfiche & microfilm equipment & scanning. So while I only have a couple of hundred
"books", I do have several hundred microfiche (I wanted to scan), and found out - after 25-30 years away from "the business" - prices haven't
dropped, despite many changes in "technology". Plus the Cost to have "my fiche" converted - would be higher
than most equipment prices!

I "could have" used an old Minolta microfiche/microfilm Reader/Printer (which still works & prints on plain paper) AND does have
"capability", to send images to computers. However, the Minolta was made in 1994, which meant I'd have to "re-invent the wheel" to get the
SCSI board, to communicate with something around Windows 95 vintage! NOT WORTH IT! - PITA lol

So I "made my own" with LESS THAN $100.00 of new parts and "lots of cussing". All you need is a Digital Magnifier - powered by
pc's, laptops, tablets, etc. - that have a USB connection. NOTE: If you want to digitize (for computers use) Microfiche
or Microfilm - you WILL NEED very bright "WHITE" LED's (ebay from China), and a "RIG" to hold the
Magnifier/Camera Very Still - when photographing/copying/scanning/etc. Books, papers, photos, etc - will require that you make a
similar unit "without" LED's. Contact me: callhow@hotmail.com with Scanning
in subject line....if you have questions.

Hello there, my name is Miguel and I live in Toronto, Canada; have been interested in building a scanner for some time and am currently reviewing my choices on the topic of model inspiration and the materials to be used (for the body and the platen). This would be my second attempt as the first one was suspended due to travel overseas. If I were to resume where I left off (the platen is pending), I would be using a modified version of David Landin's EasyBookScanner. So far, I like the idea of integrating Raspberry Pi3 like done with the Archivist Quill by Jonathon Duerig.

I look forward to sharing with other people in the forum; if there's anyone in Toronto, I would like to get in touch.

Cheers.

I want to know about best scanner available in market?

Hey Folks, I'm Daniel, and I founded this site and project back in 2009 with a little help from my friends.

I just want to say hello to everyone here, and to let folks know that I'm going to be dropping by a little more often for the foreseeable future, probably once a week or so.

I won't resume selling kits or continue full time scanner development, but I do look forward to chatting with folks about their projects and book scanning tech in general.

Hello, everyone! How are you doing? My name is Darcy, and I'm from Brazil.

First of all, this is a great forum! I'm reading posts since a year from now, and finally have registered to participate. Well, I'd like to build Mohib's model, which I found very smart and reasonable to build (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3401&p=20596#p20596).

As I said, I speak from Brazil and noticed that there are other users from here too. Have anyone built this model, and could translate the pieces names? Or - better - could build it for me? (Of course, I would pay for the service.)

Thank you, Mohib and all for such great contributions.

Best regards.