The challenge seems to be the OCR takes place in a post-processing phase instead of real-time, and the desire is to catch the improper page flip before putting

The challenge seems to be the OCR takes place in a post-processing phase instead of real-time, and the desire is to catch the improper page flip before putting away the book. Perhaps with one or more gigabit pipes, the image processing can take place in the cloud in near real-time. The Kirtas units seem highly-regarded by conservators; they might have lots of objections to even gentle shaking of their sometimes fragile charges. The impression I get is that the slight vacuum employed by the Kirtas on pages is the most handling that is accepted. There might be recent developments in computer vision and robotic fingers which could see an improved robotic analog to a human page flipper in the future. My personal hunch is the popularization and (relative) mass adoption of the slower, lower-tech open source book scanners will eventually outstrip the dedicated scanning throughput of the high-end units, and put more digitized content onto the Net, along with a legal fight over content "abandoned" by publishers. When I digitize my content, it goes into my private collection, but I sure wish publishers were more aggressive with digitization of the older material, or lenient with letting that older material go into the public domain if they aren't even chasing the long-long-long tail of that material anymore.