The place I used to work had a hydraulic paper sheer that could cut a ream straight in half. I've also got the above mentioned Fujitsu Scansnap. I started out

The place I used to work had a hydraulic paper sheer that could cut a ream straight in half. I've also got the above mentioned Fujitsu Scansnap. I started out by chopping the spines off those old textbooks I'd been lugging around and feeding them to the scanner. It was so easy, I started going by the used book store and grabbing handfuls of 50 cent curiosities. It only took about 10 minutes to scan a book this way. The downside is that the book is destroyed. Think of it as a religious experience. The book can live on forever in the digital realm but it must sacrifice it's paper form to do so!