Scanning Service

DE_612183

Not sure if anyone can I help - I have about 25 A5(ish) notebooks that I'd like to get scanned - ideally I send them off and they would then send me the digital equivalent to download - anyone come across such a service?

vacheron

If you're not interested in the very highest of quality and just want to read the notes, why not just flick through them and take a quick photo of each page with a mobile phone? You can always tidy up / straighten the images and join them together into multi-page PDF's at a later date if you find some spare time. 

I once did this with a very expensive piece of EMC test equipment where the manufacturer wanted £240 just for the manual. The test lab who we regularly use was good enought to bring their copy and then accidentally "left" their copy in the office while they went to lunch.... and now I have a copy too.   

flaneurs_lobster

In the 1980's there were Filofax backup companies in the City, collect from the yuppie trader's desk and return later that day with a (paper) copy.

Might try your local copy shop, but I'm guessing the quote might be wince-inducing.

debitcardmayhem

If you use an a4 scanner you can cut down the effort by 1/2 but it depends on whether they are bound.

Brie

If it was around here you could do the scanning at the local library.  If you have an eager and reasonably dependable 12 yo you could get them to do it for you for a modest fee.  I think a 50 page A5 booklet could be done in under 5 minutes*.  So say it's 3 hours work.  Maybe £30 cash in hand??

*50 pages = 25 double pages.  10 seconds per double page (very slow)   6 pages a minute.  4+ minutes a book.  So round up to 5 minutes x 25 books = 125 minutes, just over 2 hours.  Allow extra time for breaks, distractions, scratching one's nose etc.  Each scanned book to be labelled and emailed to you.  

Vitor

There's many such services, i.e. ProScan : Book Scanning UK | High Resolution, OCR, Competitive Prices

Note that it's usually cheaper for 'destructive' scanning where the binding is removed to allow each page to be automatically fed into the scanner.

PHK

vacheron said:

If you're not interested in the very highest of quality and just want to read the notes, why not just flick through them and take a quick photo of each page with a mobile phone? You can always tidy up / straighten the images and join them together into multi-page PDF's at a later date if you find some spare time. 

I once did this with a very expensive piece of EMC test equipment where the manufacturer wanted £240 just for the manual. The test lab who we regularly use was good enought to bring their copy and then accidentally "left" their copy in the office while they went to lunch.... and now I have a copy too.   

Just to add, many mobile phone cameras have a document mode that will automatically straighten the page. If the writing is not a spider scrawl then some will even extract the text from the document. 

vacheron

PHK said:

vacheron said:

If you're not interested in the very highest of quality and just want to read the notes, why not just flick through them and take a quick photo of each page with a mobile phone? You can always tidy up / straighten the images and join them together into multi-page PDF's at a later date if you find some spare time. 

I once did this with a very expensive piece of EMC test equipment where the manufacturer wanted £240 just for the manual. The test lab who we regularly use was good enought to bring their copy and then accidentally "left" their copy in the office while they went to lunch.... and now I have a copy too.   

Just to add, many mobile phone cameras have a document mode that will automatically straighten the page. If the writing is not a spider scrawl then some will even extract the text from the document. 

Great point.

I remember when I first started using Dropbox years ago it had this feature. You could take a photo of a page at any angle and it would straighten it up to rectangular, and you could also create multi-page PDF's on the fly by pressing a "+" button between each page.

edit:  I've just checked and it still does it!, it even draws a white outline around the border of the page before you take the photo so you can see that it has the right page outline.

I can't believe I forgot about that! 

jshm2

Jessops are still about. There are also plenty of print shops. Not to mention student unions 

outtatune

Use Onenote on your phone. It will automatically crop to the page and has filters for getting the correct contrast.

Undervalued

DE_612183 said:

Not sure if anyone can I help - I have about 25 A5(ish) notebooks that I'd like to get scanned - ideally I send them off and they would then send me the digital equivalent to download - anyone come across such a service?

In the pre digital days there used to be plenty of microfilm services around. Staff would sit all day turning pages under a professional camera setup with ideal lighting for the job in hand. 

I am out of touch these days but I assume the same services must exist using the digital equivalent.

Whoever does it, it is labour intensive so it is something that wants doing to an adequate standard for any likely use.