However, there are methods for book and large format document scanning that can help you get on track to convert all of your books to digital format.
Here are a few things you could try to get started.
Scan A Book Using A Mobile Device
The simplest way to scan book pages and turn them into a digital file is by using your mobile device. Today, there are plenty of free apps that allow you to scan the book page by page and then collect it into a single digital file.
If you only need to share a few dozen pages with your coworkers, this method can save you time by allowing you to create a ready-to-send digital file in a matter of minutes rather than needing to use a physical scanner.
This strategy, however, has several drawbacks.
For starters, consider scanning books to PDF when you have dozens, if not hundreds, of them to sift through. Flipping through page after page and scanning each time with your mobile device will rapidly become tedious, and the entire operation might take weeks of tedious, monotonous, and exhausting effort to accomplish.
DE-Binding A Book For Scanning
If you have a multi-function printer in your business, you can use it to scan your books, saving you the expense of purchasing specialized book scanning equipment. The only issue is that this process necessitates cutting or unbinding the volumes so that the pages may be sheetfed or laid flat on a scanning platform.
This process requires carefully removing the bindings from each book as well as removing the pages without harming them. After you’ve de-bound a book and separated the pages, you can simply scan them with your scanner as you would a document.
Obviously, this process will take a lot of time since you’ll need to do everything manually, page by page, but it will at least produce higher-quality images than using your phone.
Once you have each page scanned, you’ll need to crop and edit the scans to ensure that they’re consistent and then use software to sequence them into a single PDF file.
If you have dozens or even hundreds of books that need to be digitized, this process can take a very long time, so it’s not really recommended unless you only need to scan a few books.
Just as with the phone method, you would have to spend multiple days or even weeks when digitizing your book collection, with the added time that would be wasted by having to de-bind the books before scanning them.
Use Our Professional Document Scanning Services
For large-scale projects, the hands-down best option is to hire professionals that specialize in digitizing books. There are countless benefits of professional book scanning which you couldn’t get any other way, at least not without investing thousands of dollars into equipment that you would probably end up using only once or twice.
For one thing, they have the equipment and the expertise necessary to scan hundreds of books in a reasonable amount of time while ensuring that the digitized version of the books is of good quality and that your printed books remain intact.
Scanning services providers have specialized book scanners that allow them to scan a book to PDF without damaging them and without losing any quality. These book scanners use specially-designed V-shaped cradles and a high-quality camera to capture each image from above while making corrections to the images to account for the curvature of the book’s spine.
Some book scanning service providers even have automatic page-turning scanners, which utilize a robotic suction arm to turn each page, eliminating the need to manually handle the books. This is especially important when dealing with fragile texts.
And then you have the quality aspect, which also cannot be overstated. The PDF files that you’ll get will be high-resolution and crisp quality, which means that you can zoom in and look at the files in whatever magnification that you need.
