49 replies to this topic

[GrumpyMonkey]

bnf has certainly proven that it can be done, but surely it is easier to just feed it through once and have both sides scanned simultaneously, right?

I guess it depends upon your scanner. I have the Canon P150 (Image Formula/Scantini) that does duplex scanning. It has a half a$$ed ADF. I'd much rather use the Xerox when scanning many pages, single or double sided. But my main point was that using a simplex scanner to do double sided scanning does not have to be "painful", as bduncan suggested. Using the Xerox with Paperport is pretty much painless.

we need to chip in and get you an even less painless scansnap

[Martin Packer]

@GrumpyMonkey If you're buying the book and scanning it yourself you have to "cost your own time" appropriately. My Dad, who is now retired, considers his own time to be zero cost. (I don't think he does really but that's what he says, probably to be provocative towards my "wastrel" generation.) :-) On the other hand I used to be charged out at $150 an hour and so would joke my time was worth that - even though I never saw much of that money myself. :-)

The serious point is time to scan something is not zero cost.

[GrumpyMonkey]

I liked BnF's first comment about eBooks. As a relatively recent Kindle owner I think that what's commercially available (or for free through Project Gutenberg) should be done that way (and perhaps managed by Calibre (also free)). But there are pubs that are never going to be available softcopy so will need the scanner treatment.

Which raises a question in my mind: Is there anyone else who like me uses Calibre (or similar) and Evernote together? What sort of accomodation / workflow / division of effort between the two do you have?

calibre and evernote seem like totally different productsto me, but i guess my main use of calibre is to turn things into pdfs on occasion in order to read / put into evernote.

[Martin Packer]

@GrumpyMonkey I manage my Kindle (but could be any other eBook Reader) with Calibre. I suppose I could turn all the books into PDFs using it and put them in Evernote. I'm not sure I see the point - as I have Kindle software in lots of places.

[GrumpyMonkey]

@GrumpyMonkey If you're buying the book and scanning it yourself you have to "cost your own time" appropriately. My Dad, who is now retired, considers his own time to be zero cost. (I don't think he does really but that's what he says, probably to be provocative towards my "wastrel" generation.) :-) On the other hand I used to be charged out at $150 an hour and so would joke my time was worth that - even though I never saw much of that money myself. :-)

The serious point is time to scan something is not zero cost.

indeed. my time is precious, and i highly recommend scanning only the books you'll want to keep (in my case academic works in various languages that are unlikely to be released as electronic books, much less as pdfs i can store and search).

scanning all of the sources (dozens of volumes) used in a dissertation, which will lead to book (s), which will (hopefully) lead to a faculty appointment? priceless

scanning that three dollar paperback you might never read again? a total waste of time!

[Martin Packer]

And right now we're going away from paper as fast as we can - not least because bookshelves have appeared in rooms we'd really rather they hadn't. So I'm replacing some of my books with eBooks, we're giving some away to charity (that we're prepared to take the risk of not wanting to read again) and some are remaining. In the family I'm the most "pro eBook" so it's my stuff that's getting the treatment with most alacrity.

Twitter followers will've seen me offer a copy of "Moby Dick" to anyone who I'm likely to run into. The eBook version was free and better, as it happens. There may be more such attempts. But mostly Oxfam is the beneficiary.

[Martin Packer]

@GrumpyMonkey With respect to your academic materials I guess I'm more fortunate that almost all my subject matter stuff is already electronic. My wife, as an academic, is probably nearer your situation than I am.

[GrumpyMonkey]

@GrumpyMonkey With respect to your academic materials I guess I'm more fortunate that almost all my subject matter stuff is already electronic. My wife, as an academic, is probably nearer your situation than I am.

Yep.
If you mainly read English language fiction, you have dramatically better chances of finding electronic versions of your books. I am very resistant to the erosion of consumer rights represented by the current system of buying the right to rent a book, but I suppose it is more of an internal struggle, because even I end up selling off my rights for convenience. It's pretty rare that I purchase a dead tree version for scanning instead of getting the electronic version.

[Johnny McClung]

Not true. My Xerox Documate 510 scanner with an auto document feeder scans only one side at a time. Yet I've scanned books & large stacks of paper (printed on both sides) with ease. The Paperport software that came with it (and which I've subsequently updated at my own expense at least twice, since getting the scanner) is smart enough to allow you to scan one side, then load the pages back in & scan the other side. It will then assemble the pages in the correct order. I've scanned thousands (literally) of multi page/two sided docs with this scanner with ease in the five years I've had it. Taking this one step further, even if you have one multi page PDF that contains the odd pages & another that contains the even pages, there is software that will quickly & easily assemble the pages for you. IE, ISTS File Splitter/Merger, which I've purchased & used in the past, as well.

Wow! I will not be able to thank you enough for this offhanded comment, BurgerNFries. Paperport came with my printer/scanner/fax I just bought, but I did not know it also had the ability to scan. I was only using it for PDF manipulation. I was using some other software that came with my printer for the scanning. Version 12 came with my printer, but after this, I will upgrade to the latest edition (I was thinking about it anyway.) Thank you!!!

[BurgersNFries]

Wow! I will not be able to thank you enough for this offhanded comment, BurgerNFries. Paperport came with my printer/scanner/fax I just bought, but I did not know it also had the ability to scan. I was only using it for PDF manipulation. I was using some other software that came with my printer for the scanning. Version 12 came with my printer, but after this, I will upgrade to the latest edition (I was thinking about it anyway.) Thank you!!!

You're welcome! I think 11 came with my scanner & then I upgraded to 12. I'm currently using 14 Professional, which is the best version I've used, IMO.

[Johnny McClung]

I'm happy to say and excited that I am working on scanning a college text book. I'm doing it by chapters as I have time, but have a question for you. I've scanned the first couple of chapters and if the file size stays the same throughout the chapters, I will be over the 50MB limit of note size. What would you guys suggest? The simplest option, I see, is to just split the book into two notes. With Evernote search, it should not be a problem.

Thank you for any suggestions.

[GrumpyMonkey]

I'm happy to say and excited that I am working on scanning a college text book. I'm doing it by chapters as I have time, but have a question for you. I've scanned the first couple of chapters and if the file size stays the same throughout the chapters, I will be over the 50MB limit of note size. What would you guys suggest? The simplest option, I see, is to just split the book into two notes. With Evernote search, it should not be a problem.

Thank you for any suggestions.

Yes, you often run over the 50mb limit. The best thing to do is to split it up, depending on how you use it. I usually read a copy in iannotate (ipad) and save a copy (broken up in large chunks, irrespective of chapter breaks) in Evernote for searching. So, I search in Evernote for a term, see all of the sources that have it, then open them up in iAnnotate to search for each specific page. If I am on my computer, I open the file up from Evernote. If you were a more organized person, you could break the file up into chapter chunks

By the way, unless you need color (sometimes you do), I recommend 300-600 dpi black and white. Even with 500 pages, you might not get up to 50 megabytes.

[Martin Packer]

@GrumpyMonkey I also wonder if levels of compression and image quality come into play here: Readability is probably less difficult than OCRing. If it's a college text book for material the OP is supposed to be learning maybe doing proper OCR and using the proofreading as a learning exercise is valid.

(Doing a little at Distributed Proofreaders has been and interesting example of this.) Site: http://www.pgdp.net/c/

[Michael Campbell]

I liked BnF's first comment about eBooks. As a relatively recent Kindle owner I think that what's commercially available (or for free through Project Gutenberg) should be done that way (and perhaps managed by Calibre (also free)). But there are pubs that are never going to be available softcopy so will need the scanner treatment.

Which raises a question in my mind: Is there anyone else who like me uses Calibre (or similar) and Evernote together? What sort of accomodation / workflow / division of effort between the two do you have?

I use both Calibre and Evernote, but not together. For me, putting Calibre's library into Dropbox has worked well; I have the stuff I want in my e-reader (a nook, in my case), and it's replicated across my various machines AND the cloud in case of machine loss.

[~Adam]

OK, time for my two cents.

I LOVE my Kindle! However, I'm not prepared to scan my books for use with my Kindle.

One big reason is that they will become PDFs and PDFs do not look good o my Kindle. They are way too small to read. And, if I zoom in, I then have to scroll around on the page just to read it.

Now, if you all are talking about scanning them so that they can be read on screen, that's a no go for me as well. I just don't like reading copious amounts of material on a computer screen.

[GrumpyMonkey]

OK, time for my two cents.

I LOVE my Kindle! However, I'm not prepared to scan my books for use with my Kindle.

One big reason is that they will become PDFs and PDFs do not look good o my Kindle. They are way too small to read. And, if I zoom in, I then have to scroll around on the page just to read it.

Now, if you all are talking about scanning them so that they can be read on screen, that's a no go for me as well. I just don't like reading copious amounts of material on a computer screen.

kindle dx works well with pdfs. it is way overpriced and runs pathetically outdated software, but it was the device that got me excited about going paperless, because it finally offered an enjoyable platform for reading.

pdfs look fabulous on the ipad. i like them on android tablets too. yeah, i know some people will never enjoy these devices, but i gotta say i do

[~Adam]

OK, time for my two cents.

I LOVE my Kindle! However, I'm not prepared to scan my books for use with my Kindle.

One big reason is that they will become PDFs and PDFs do not look good o my Kindle. They are way too small to read. And, if I zoom in, I then have to scroll around on the page just to read it.

Now, if you all are talking about scanning them so that they can be read on screen, that's a no go for me as well. I just don't like reading copious amounts of material on a computer screen.

kindle dx works well with pdfs. it is way overpriced and runs pathetically outdated software, but it was the device that got me excited about going paperless, because it finally offered an enjoyable platform for reading.

pdfs look fabulous on the ipad. i like them on android tablets too. yeah, i know some people will never enjoy these devices, but i gotta say i do

If I could, I'd have lots of tablets around the house. Even the Kindle I got was a gift.

Want to send me your old tablet? For science of course! LOL

[tiredofpaper]

@Adam, I agree with you for the most part as well. I think the iPad is nice to read on personally and the Kindle isn't too bad to me. As far as reading on an actual pc/laptop computer screen I'm not too keen on it as well.

[BurgersNFries]

OK, time for my two cents.

I LOVE my Kindle! However, I'm not prepared to scan my books for use with my Kindle.

One big reason is that they will become PDFs and PDFs do not look good o my Kindle. They are way too small to read. And, if I zoom in, I then have to scroll around on the page just to read it..

IIRC, I used Calibre (free) to convert a couple of PDFs to a different format (mobi? ePub?) that was MUCH easier to read on my Kindle 3 than the PDF version. I'll have to check into this when I get home.

[GrumpyMonkey]

OK, time for my two cents.

I LOVE my Kindle! However, I'm not prepared to scan my books for use with my Kindle.

One big reason is that they will become PDFs and PDFs do not look good o my Kindle. They are way too small to read. And, if I zoom in, I then have to scroll around on the page just to read it..

IIRC, I used Calibre (free) to convert a couple of PDFs to a different format (mobi? ePub?) that was MUCH easier to read on my Kindle 3 than the PDF version. I'll have to check into this when I get home.

the problem is usually formatting, but if you have a pretty straightforward file, this is the way to go!