4 ms·

I am not the domain expert on this project, but here at the Internet Archive we ended up developing our own system (not dissimilar from this one, albeit with si

I am not the domain expert on this project, but here at the Internet Archive we ended up developing our own system (not dissimilar from this one, albeit with significantly less automation) at a fairly low cost. Some links for details: https://archive.org/scanning https://archive.org/scanning https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem (links to additional detail pages there) https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5kjy/saving-human-knowledge-at-800-pages-an-hour https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5kjy/saving-hum... (a few years old) We've found that high-cost implementations are less appealing to smaller sites and libraries (which may have mandates that books not be shipped away), and we can achieve high scanning rates through parallelism rather than single extremely high-throughput stations. Additionally, many books are much more complex, valuable, fragile, or simply not amenable to automatic methods whereas skilled scanners can move through them with ease.

jacquesm 8y ago
Neat! What I really like about the system I posted is that it appears to be a lot quicker because it does not require the book to be pressed against something to flatten it. That is a time consuming step, introduces yet another source of optical errors in to the path between the camera and the book and might get dirty. It looks as if the pages are turned and fixed by air after the 'thumb' on the right hand side releases the next page. There is a long screw that turns slowly moving the 'thumb' down at a rate that release about 4 pages every second, the system then scans the image the moment the page is fixed. Quite clever.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  It is neat, it does have the downside of not really being usable on valuable/rare or delicate books though.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    That's true. But almost by definition there will not be that many rare books and valuable ones typically also are not available in large numbers. So the scope for applying this tech is huge. I looked at a very large scale digitization operation in some detail a while ago, some of the tech they had there was super interesting. I love the creativity around solutions like these.
asdefghyk 8y ago
RE " ....ended up developing our own system...." The Internet Archive should more clearly credit where this design originated from. Whose work it is based on. It is only reluctantly that you gave them any credit.
- deleted 8y ago
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- asdefghyk 8y ago
  It's based on an open source design . SNIP ( from bottom of page https://forum.diybookscanner.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3161 https://forum.diybookscanner.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3161 ) page "...the way the TableTopScribe was handled wasn't great (there's a long, long behind-the-scenes story that goes with that), but I was able to convince them to post that credit at the bottom of the page after some back-and-forth with Robert Miller. When the Archive uses and changes our technology, It shows that our ideas are viable and that our approach has merit and value. Ultimately, the intention of making things Open Source was to get people to copy it, and so if I step back far enough, I feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment when I see things like this. (even when the purple tinge shows they are still using the cheap COB LEDs... sigh). Truth be told, at least when I was there, the Archive people were my people and I still care about them and their mission. Unfortunately it was the Archive (through my work with them, when I worked there, and later, when they rebuilt the design in China) that unintentionally taught me that Open Hardware is a toothless thing. They did, in the end, "release" their "source files" - an .easm which requires Solidworks and doesn't give you the ability to change things*, but does give you a functional assembly to take measurements from. For the Archivist, I chose to share DXFs, STLs, and dimensioned drawings, which have a different set of problems, but at least have wide interoperability. All in all, it's an imperfect world, but a good one. Ultimately, I care far, far more about scanning books than I do about the specifics of their operations, so I've come to peace with all of it and feel good that they've taken it as far as they have. Scan on....." and their reluctant acknowledgement where the idea came from ..right at bottom of page ( https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem) .... "...Before we close, we want to recognize the early work of Daniel Reetz and the DIY community. They saw a need for a DIY image capture device and developed a working prototype offered under an OpenHardwareDesign license - CC-BY-SA[2]. You may find information about that here - http://www.diybookscanner.org...." http://www.diybookscanner.org...."
daniel_reetz 8y ago
Hi Jonah, just wanted to say congrats on the Tabletop Scribe and also wanted to point out that I designed the first version (the Hackerspace Scanner) with lots of input from the DIY Book Scanner community, who deserve a lot of credit. If anyone here has interest in building their own, check out diybookscanner.org/archivist for the Archivist model, which I placed in the public domain and documented to the last detail. Also, the TTScribe is based on our old Hackerspace scanner model, which was just a beta, not the newer and more thoroughly engineered Archivist which also has more permissive licensing, fewer components and more sensible lighting. If you want to get started, that's the place to start.

jacquesm 8y ago

Neat! What I really like about the system I posted is that it appears to be a lot quicker because it does not require the book to be pressed against something to flatten it. That is a time consuming step, introduces yet another source of optical errors in to the path between the camera and the book and might get dirty. It looks as if the pages are turned and fixed by air after the 'thumb' on the right hand side releases the next page. There is a long screw that turns slowly moving the 'thumb' down at a rate that release about 4 pages every second, the system then scans the image the moment the page is fixed. Quite clever.

rtkwe 8y ago
It is neat, it does have the downside of not really being usable on valuable/rare or delicate books though.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  That's true. But almost by definition there will not be that many rare books and valuable ones typically also are not available in large numbers. So the scope for applying this tech is huge. I looked at a very large scale digitization operation in some detail a while ago, some of the tech they had there was super interesting. I love the creativity around solutions like these.

asdefghyk 8y ago

RE " ....ended up developing our own system...." The Internet Archive should more clearly credit where this design originated from. Whose work it is based on. It is only reluctantly that you gave them any credit.

deleted 8y ago
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asdefghyk 8y ago
It's based on an open source design . SNIP ( from bottom of page https://forum.diybookscanner.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3161 https://forum.diybookscanner.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3161 ) page "...the way the TableTopScribe was handled wasn't great (there's a long, long behind-the-scenes story that goes with that), but I was able to convince them to post that credit at the bottom of the page after some back-and-forth with Robert Miller. When the Archive uses and changes our technology, It shows that our ideas are viable and that our approach has merit and value. Ultimately, the intention of making things Open Source was to get people to copy it, and so if I step back far enough, I feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment when I see things like this. (even when the purple tinge shows they are still using the cheap COB LEDs... sigh). Truth be told, at least when I was there, the Archive people were my people and I still care about them and their mission. Unfortunately it was the Archive (through my work with them, when I worked there, and later, when they rebuilt the design in China) that unintentionally taught me that Open Hardware is a toothless thing. They did, in the end, "release" their "source files" - an .easm which requires Solidworks and doesn't give you the ability to change things*, but does give you a functional assembly to take measurements from. For the Archivist, I chose to share DXFs, STLs, and dimensioned drawings, which have a different set of problems, but at least have wide interoperability. All in all, it's an imperfect world, but a good one. Ultimately, I care far, far more about scanning books than I do about the specifics of their operations, so I've come to peace with all of it and feel good that they've taken it as far as they have. Scan on....." and their reluctant acknowledgement where the idea came from ..right at bottom of page ( https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem https://archive.org/details/tabletopscribesystem) .... "...Before we close, we want to recognize the early work of Daniel Reetz and the DIY community. They saw a need for a DIY image capture device and developed a working prototype offered under an OpenHardwareDesign license - CC-BY-SA[2]. You may find information about that here - http://www.diybookscanner.org...." http://www.diybookscanner.org...."

daniel_reetz 8y ago

Hi Jonah, just wanted to say congrats on the Tabletop Scribe and also wanted to point out that I designed the first version (the Hackerspace Scanner) with lots of input from the DIY Book Scanner community, who deserve a lot of credit. If anyone here has interest in building their own, check out diybookscanner.org/archivist for the Archivist model, which I placed in the public domain and documented to the last detail. Also, the TTScribe is based on our old Hackerspace scanner model, which was just a beta, not the newer and more thoroughly engineered Archivist which also has more permissive licensing, fewer components and more sensible lighting. If you want to get started, that's the place to start.