Book Scanning

[tiredofpaper 1]

Hi, I'm fairly new to Evernote, but so many people I know are using it so it's time to join the club.

I was curious has anyone scanned in their entire library of books yet?

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on scanning their entire library of books and if they regret doing it or feel that it's better or not. I probably have about 100 books and I feel it's time to go all digital. I've been trying to create a paperless lifestyle and Evernote seems very awesome for this. Many people on here seem like they've been looking into this for a while. I scanned some old books at this place http://1dollarscan.com/ and was considering doing them all there.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

i am working through my library. i've done over a thousand and i can say it has definitely been worth it. i'd never have done it without the ipad, which makes access to everything so easy. i've got to be able to read in bed (and on the train, plane, etc.), or there is no point. the retina display makes it so nice, too

good luck with the project!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Another option is to get the ebook version, if one exists. Although that can be a bit more costly, it's a lot faster than doing your own scanning. I have an affinity to hard copies of cookbooks. But for all other books, for the past couple of years, I've always bought ebooks.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

ebooks are great. i buy them when i can. but, for better or for worse:

1. the books i read are prohibitively expensive or unavailable. the book publishing industry is making it very difficult for academics. it is usually about the same price to purchase it yourself new and scan it, or less if you get it used, and it is definitely better not to have to spend 30-100 dollars again on a book.

2. you get the page numbers if you scan (.mobi files are sometimes inaccurate, if you get the page numbers at all).

3. electronic books from amazon are not bought but rented--you cannot legally put it onto your computer, loan it to colleagues or students, upload it to evernote, etc. this creates a huge problem particularly when searching.

4. images are often incompetently scanned. it is truly unbelievalbe how atrocious the quality can be.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Some good points by Grumpy.

Another niche reason for book scanning - we are getting ready to move.

Digitizing all our books helps reduce the packing and shipping costs. Donating also helps get rid of some of the dogs.

On a smaller scale, last year, I had all our 35MM color slides digitized by www.scancafe.com. A lot easier than struggling with a projector and all those carousels of slides. And the digital results were better looking than the original dusty, spotted slides.

[ClutterBGone 152]

I value all of the comments of the above members. I scanned three books today, I cut the spine off, scan, post to Evernote, and then shred the book! Like jbenson2 and GrumpyMonkey said, to move your books in the future, just pick up your iPad!

[Johnny McClung 10]

This intrigues me. I never would have thought of scanning in my books to become completely paperless. It would seem to me that it is a very tedious task. So the process would be basically cut of the binding, scan one side of all the papers, then the other side, merge all the PDFs into one and the make it a searchable PDF. What the biggest sized book you've done? How long does it take?

[bduncan 49]

This intrigues me. I never would have thought of scanning in my books to become completely paperless. It would seem to me that it is a very tedious task. So the process would be basically cut of the binding, scan one side of all the papers, then the other side, merge all the PDFs into one and the make it a searchable PDF. What the biggest sized book you've done? How long does it take?

I don't think you'd want to even attempt this without using a document scanner that scans both sides of the page at the same time and then OCRs like a ScanSnap or Canon imageFORMULA. Scanning one side, the other, and then merging would be painful.

[tiredofpaper 1]

Whoa, this is cool to see so many people on here doing things like this. I couldn't imagine actually scanning the books myself like some of you have but that's really cool. I gotta finish the library and then start working on other documents. Thanks for the tips and inspiration thus far.

[ClutterBGone 152]

This intrigues me. I never would have thought of scanning in my books to become completely paperless. It would seem to me that it is a very tedious task. So the process would be basically cut of the binding, scan one side of all the papers, then the other side, merge all the PDFs into one and the make it a searchable PDF. What the biggest sized book you've done? How long does it take?

I use ScanSnap and it will scan both sides of the page with one pass. You can run a 200 page book through in about 20 minutes [have clean edges], it will then run (automatically} all of the pages through its build in OCR, that will take another 20 to 25 minutes. Next just assemble (again auto) all of the pages using the built in organizer, next save and give the PDF a name. Now save your file to "your" Evernote. I have one notebook called.......Library.

Regards,

David in Wichita

[tiredofpaper 1]

A lot of people are scanning themselves, never thought of that. I like using a service, but that's just me, maybe if I had more time I'd do it myself. It's never ceases to amaze me how much everything is changing, I used to be against it, but now I embrace it.

[Johnny McClung 10]

@tiredofpaper Are you happy with the services at 1dollarscan? I was thinking about using them, but wanted to know what you thought of them first.

[tiredofpaper 1]

Hey Johnny,

Honestly I've used them for a couple of months and been happy with them so far. I've mostly done books with them (I think they do other things as well) but so far they've been good. It's pretty cheap so maybe just try a few books first? Overall I've been happy with them. I think I saw some other people mention them in some other posts too, so maybe some second opinions are good, but so far I really like them. It's cool to see all the other things people are trying on here when it comes to book scanning, but so far 1dollarscan has been working for me. Hope that helps. It's kinda fun to see everything transformed. Good luck.

[tiredofpaper 1]

Ok, now I am curious!

Who else has used Scan Snap as a scanner or other scanners? Do you think it's worth it, any pros and cons? I'm interested in looking more into this. I see some Scan Snap scanners aren't too bad price wise if you have a lot to scan. Also any issues with certain paper or have you guys tried books mostly?

Thanks!

[idoc 400]

How do you cut the spine so that you get clean edges? I tried this on a number of books and got a mess with papers that I had to hand tear out of the book, clumps of hard gluish material on the pages, rough edges etc. It took a long time to scan because the rough gluey edges would occasionally jam in the scanner. If there were a reliable way of doing this I would scan in a lot more of my material.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

How do you cut the spine so that you get clean edges? I tried this on a number of books and got a mess with papers that I had to hand tear out of the book, clumps of hard gluish material on the pages, rough edges etc. It took a long time to scan because the rough gluey edges would occasionally jam in the scanner. If there were a reliable way of doing this I would scan in a lot more of my material.

An exacto knife and a ruler works well enough, but ideally, i use a guillotine paper cutter. here is an inexpensive one (never used it myself).

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/368962/Swingline-6-ClassicCut-Compact-Trimmer/?Channel=Google&mr:trackingCode=C62BB722-411F-E011-AD27-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA&cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Googlepla-_-Office_Supplies+Basic_Supplies-_-368962&mr:adType=pla&mr:ad=19966419836&mr:keyword={keyword}

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I don't think you'd want to even attempt this without using a document scanner that scans both sides of the page at the same time and then OCRs like a ScanSnap or Canon imageFORMULA. Scanning one side, the other, and then merging would be painful.

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.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

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?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

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.

[Martin Packer 162]

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?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

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 162]

@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 4,319]

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 162]

@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 4,319]

@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 162]

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 162]

@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 4,319]

@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 10]

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 2,407]

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 10]

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 4,319]

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 162]

@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 4]

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 17]

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 4,319]

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 17]

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 1]

@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 2,407]

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 4,319]

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!

[~Adam 17]

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!

If Calibre can convert my PDFs to anything easier to read on the Kindle, I'd be excited to learn that. I await your response.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

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!

If Calibre can convert my PDFs to anything easier to read on the Kindle, I'd be excited to learn that. I await your response.

Yes. It can do that. Just download and give it a try!

As I said, though, it depends on what kind of PDF you have. Complicated / poor formatting (garbage in) won't turn out well (garbage out). Also, you need to have PDFs that have text in them, and not just images -- in other words, if you scan a book, you have to run optical character recognition to produce the data for Calibre to convert.

[GHall 12]

3. electronic books from amazon are not bought but, rented--you cannot legally put it onto your computer, loan it to colleagues or students, upload it to evernote, etc. this creates a huge problem particularly when searching.

I am surprised and then again am not. Since I haven't purchased ebooks and haven't really been into them, I had no idea.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

3. electronic books from amazon are not bought but, rented--you cannot legally put it onto your computer, loan it to colleagues or students, upload it to evernote, etc. this creates a huge problem particularly when searching.

IIRC, several months ago (last year?), Amazon allowed Kindle users to loan ebooks. There were restrictions such as you can only do this once & you cannot be reading the book while it's loaned out. Rather sucks, but I do think Amazon's DRM has been broken. I know I un-DRM'd the ebooks I bought prior to getting my Kindle, so that I can sideload them onto my Kindle. But I don't think I ever tested removing Amazon's DRM.

I'm really not sure on the legality of this stuff b/c of the Fair Use act. IOW, as long as I'm moving my ebooks from my Palm TX to my Kindle, then it's for my own use. OTOH, of course, it's obviously against copyright restrictions to make copies to "gift" to your friends as an inexpensive Christmas gift or just for fun.

[GHall 12]

Nice thread. Informative. Any specific tips for scanning paper books and then formatting PDF's to make them most readable?

[deverill 54]

... surely it is easier to just feed it through once and have both sides scanned simultaneously, right?

Or at least faster. One pass gets 2 pages at a time.

I have Scansnap S1300 (not a heavy duty scanner) and scanned a 600 page book rather easily. It wasn't too bad and didn't take nearly as long as I though, but I may not do it again. The reasons? 1. I don't have that many books I actually look at (my college physics book cost over $60 and I hate the thought of throwing it out but haven't looked at it more than twice since I graduated (25 yrs)) 2. It's a pain to "de-bind" the book. 3. Everything in my programming books is either outdated or easily found online so I should probably donate them to a library rather than scan them.

I did the one book after reading about it here and wanted to see how it went. The only downside is that it broke my one huge scan into blocks of about 40 pages each. I'm sorry I'm not positive about which program but I am pretty sure it was the Scansnap software that did this, presumably to limit the size of the files. I just named them Part1, Part2, etc and put them into a separate notebook titled the same as the book. I also found the cover online and put that jpeg in to be complete.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

i should say i don't scan "everything." i scan everything that is worth scanning. if it isn't worth my time, it doesn't deserve to be on my shelf, so it goes out the door: donated, sold, or "gifted."

[Michael Campbell 4]

I use ScanSnap and it will scan both sides of the page with one pass. You can run a 200 page book through in about 20 minutes [have clean edges], it will then run (automatically} all of the pages through its build in OCR, that will take another 20 to 25 minutes. Next just assemble (again auto) all of the pages using the built in organizer, next save and give the PDF a name. Now save your file to "your" Evernote. I have one notebook called.......Library.

Regards,

David in Wichita

How do you scan a book that's too big to fit in scansnap? (Or do you just load it up; the SS scans from the bottom of the stack, so you could in theory have a stack of paper almost limitless in size...)

And do you scan to Evernote directly, or to a "Searchable PDF"?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I use ScanSnap and it will scan both sides of the page with one pass. You can run a 200 page book through in about 20 minutes [have clean edges], it will then run (automatically} all of the pages through its build in OCR, that will take another 20 to 25 minutes. Next just assemble (again auto) all of the pages using the built in organizer, next save and give the PDF a name. Now save your file to "your" Evernote. I have one notebook called.......Library.

Regards,

David in Wichita

How do you scan a book that's too big to fit in scansnap? (Or do you just load it up; the SS scans from the bottom of the stack, so you could in theory have a stack of paper almost limitless in size...)

And do you scan to Evernote directly, or to a "Searchable PDF"?

feed in twenty pages or so at a time. repeat until finished. evernote does not do ocr on pdf files over 100 pages / 25mb or larger, so if you want the content to be searchable (why note?), then i would do ocr on it before putting it into evernote. an added benefit to this on the mac is that search results will also show up in spotlight searches.

https://support.evernote.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=591&hitOffset=297+269+215+204+199+87+54+38+27+23+9&docID=12656

i ocr pretty much everything before putting it into evernote.

[Michael Campbell 4]

I use ScanSnap and it will scan both sides of the page with one pass. You can run a 200 page book through in about 20 minutes [have clean edges], it will then run (automatically} all of the pages through its build in OCR, that will take another 20 to 25 minutes. Next just assemble (again auto) all of the pages using the built in organizer, next save and give the PDF a name. Now save your file to "your" Evernote. I have one notebook called.......Library.

Regards,

David in Wichita

How do you scan a book that's too big to fit in scansnap? (Or do you just load it up; the SS scans from the bottom of the stack, so you could in theory have a stack of paper almost limitless in size...)

And do you scan to Evernote directly, or to a "Searchable PDF"?

feed in twenty pages or so at a time. repeat until finished. evernote does not do ocr on pdf files over 100 pages / 25mb or larger, so if you want the content to be searchable (why note?), then i would do ocr on it before putting it into evernote. an added benefit to this on the mac is that search results will also show up in spotlight searches.

https://support.ever...#38;docID=12656

i ocr pretty much everything before putting it into evernote.

Thanks; I OCR anything that goes through SS for sure. I've never had an occasion to do more than 1 scan and merge them, so just wondered how that worked. I'll try it later today; I'm eyeing some books I really don't need physical hardcopy of, but don't necessarily want to throw out either.

[Spectrablue 2]

I want to say I've been an Evernote Premium member for as long as I've been using 1dollarscan (over a year for each). I'm a huge fan of both.

A couple points to keep in mind are that

1. the pdf's generated from 1dollarscan can be very large if not fine tuned for a specific output (an option that you can take at any time on their cloud services, you can request multiple fine tunes to fit all of your devices). 
2. there are limits to the size of pdf you can upload to either evernote or google drive or google books. Google drive storage and one drive prices are falling dramatically now...1 terabyte free if you subscribe to office, $10/month retail for 1tb at google, or unlimited if you have a $10/month google for business account.
3. when you send a book to 1dollarscan its a one way trip...the book will be recycled. If you decide to scan a book with SSEE you will also be taking essentially a one way trip.
4. Another Fuji scanner can be purchased that lets you scan from a mounted camera looking down on the table surface and software lets you take out the fingers (still very tedious but this scanner got plenty of awards and other scanners were way more expensive before this one came out with the same features). I actually tried to find a scanner like it before I embarked on my 1dollarscan quest. this other Fuji scanner would be good if you don't want to sacrifice your book in the process.. perhaps better for materials you want to eventually resell(of course you'll delete your scanned copy after resale ).
5. all of the instructions for how to scan your own books via evernote are at the end of the day still fairly time consuming
6. if you get a premium membership with 1dollarscan you are looking at 10,000 pages (100 sets of 100 pages) per month for ~$100 plush shipping. Even if you could scan that many pages with ever note per month, you would likely overload your limits of uploading to evernote
7. if you were to upload your book to evernote you would perhaps not like the impact of OCR upon large volumes of written material when it comes to Evernotes helpful if you look at this you might want to look at that or the impact on search engine results...perhaps giving the book its own notebook would help or if they have a setting to remove a particular pdf from the helpful hand reach.
8. google books offers 100mb limits per book and can house 1000 ebooks on the cloud for free...combine with MoonReader+ or something for optimal reading
9. Going over 12 months on 1dollarscan and frankly the total capacity of ebooks space vastly exceeds my premium limit (even if I spend $5/gb for 25gb total per year)...it would take me over a decade to push them all into evernote. That said 1dollarscan lets you connect your Evernote cloud with their cloud. Very nice if you are only needing a few books.
10. while a book may be a collection of paper (documents), I think the benefit of Evernote shines more from scanning things you normally would have put in a file folder, or photos, and I'm embarking on scanning collectible cards after giving Evernote Premium Presentation a trial. Presentation allowed me to flip the front back image with one direction arrow and go to the next card with another arrow. I haven't found a display program anywhere that lets me distinguish between next card and front and back. The only thing I wish I could do is click (don't show doc headers so I don't have to click spacebar to move on to see photo). For baseball collectors (or MTG) the scanning using SSEE uses high end rollers now that previously were only found in expensive $2,000 scanners...used by baseball card shops with over 38 million cards. While they were scanning 15k cards per hour, you can easily scan stacks of say 27 cards at a time(perhaps way more ) and get front back images VERY quickly and be able to create notebooks around a card set and each card is its own note with front and back image included. VERY cool. 
11. If Evernote were to expand their capacity limits, I would consider moving my 1dollarscan collection into their cloud but for now I've overwhelmed the pipe. 
12. If you have plenty of time and are frugal sure go ahead and scan your own book and if you only have a few it will be under the limits...but the monthly premium price plus shipping to 1Dollarscan is simply very hard to beat. For about $4 per book it would be hard to say you that the hour you spent scanning your own book was worth that little..min wage is 3x higher...but if you don't subscribe to premium then its a slightly different story. I suggest you find 25-30 books and get 1 month...don't send them 1 book at a time. You can cancel the sub once you are done. You can also have Amazon ship books directly to 1dollarscan..and again you can have your fine tunes automatically sent to evernote (these would be the smaller pdf's not the original large pdfs so as not to overload Evernote). 
13. Bottom line is that 1dollarscan is an inexpensive one way ticket to scanning your books and it can coordinate with your evernote account. 

[jbenson2 2,147]

My solution? I'm moving to another state. Most of our hard cover books will never be read again by either my wife or myself. I don't see any need to pay a moving company to let the books gather dust in our next home. So over the past 6 weeks, I've made at least a dozen trips to the local library and donated hundreds of books. On the way home, I stop by McDonald's and they give me a few more empty boxes for my next book run.

 

It feels absolutely wonderful and liberating to clear the house of so much weight.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

A nice scanner + a nice guillotine paper cutter will be about $500. Depending on your settings, you can easily go through a book every ten or fifteen minutes from first cut, through disassembly, to disposal. At four books an hour, it is actually pretty cost effective while also ensuring you use the best scan settings for each book. This is especially true if you have hundreds or thousands of books. You can do other stuff while the paper is feeding through. Scansnap software will make it searchable / straighten crooked pages.

It could fit into an Evernote account, but It will be large, and you may want to optimize your account usage.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127

[Wordsgood 526]

Guillotine books? That is BLASPHEMY! Shame in you for suggesting such a horror!

Remind me to leave you alone with my precious paper babies...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Guillotine books? That is BLASPHEMY! Shame in you for suggesting such a horror!

Remind me to leave you alone with my precious paper babies...

A nice scanner + a nice guillotine paper cutter will be about $500. Depending on your settings, you can easily go through a book every ten or fifteen minutes from first cut, through disassembly, to disposal. At four books an hour, it is actually pretty cost effective while also ensuring you use the best scan settings for each book. This is especially true if you have hundreds or thousands of books. You can do other stuff while the paper is feeding through. Scansnap software will make it searchable / straighten crooked pages.

It could fit into an Evernote account, but It will be large, and you may want to optimize your account usage.http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127

Yeah. There's a special hell waiting for me somewhere.

On the plus side, when libraries toss books (yes, they do) I'm there waiting with a box to take them to my mad-scientist lair, where they will be dismembered and reassembled as digital versions of their former selves. Put them on my ipad and I can go anywhere in the world with them. I am a bibliophile myself, but my desire to read outweighs any love I have for dead trees. I read far more than I used to because I always have the books with me. If you ever have any old, musty, unneeded books, don't put them in the attic or basement to die. Drop me a line, and I'll give them a new life

[Wordsgood 526]

And now I have a picture of you stuck in my head. You're in and old dark basement, reminiscent of a 1950s B horror flick. The only light is a single naked bulb hanging from a cord in the ceiling, thickly coated in dust and dead moths. You yourself, are wearing one of those old aviator caps with the furry ear flaps, huge old-style welding goggles, a leather apron & leather glove going all the way upto your elbows and knee high riding boots.

Off to the side is large heap of dismembered books, their lovingly rendered pages sobbing softly in despair... Before you is a metal surgical table tilted nearly upright. On it is a giant ipad monstrosity you built and are slowly bring to life by feeding it pages from the heap of books you just slaughtered.

The world is doomed!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Nice image!

Actually, I have soft music playing, the room is filled with sunlight, and I treat the books with tender loving care -- right up to the moment I lop off their spines and feed them through the scanner. I love my books. I just express my love differently

[mayrabloom 0]

Can the Evernote Scanner scan pages from a book without destroying the book?

Thanks.

[Candid 167]

Can the Evernote Scanner scan pages from a book without destroying the book?

Thanks.

 

No, as noted in another discussion the Evernote scanner is not a flatbed scanner and so a book would have to be cut up to use it.