MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Archiving books (and magazines)

CallOfCth'reader · 03-08-2011, 03:46 PM

I've got a lot of old paper books which I don't want to keep (mainly for space reasons), but I'd love to have them in electronic format. Unfortunately, I've yet to find any of them in digital print. The only option open to me, for the moment at least, is to archive them myself. The ultimate aim, when I get round to it, is to convert the archived books to LRF and/or EPUB format.

What is the best way to initially archive them, for when I (eventually, maybe) convert them to LRF/EPUB in the future? I'm thinking scan the pages, and then stitch them up into a PDF file. I've read that PDF's aren't good to OCR from though, so what are my options? Save each page as a JPG?

A lot of the books are 20-40 years old, and the magazines about 20+ years old, so the pages are various shades of...um...sepia. When I save the page scans, do I just save them 'as is' and do contrast tweaking when I eventually OCR them?

03-08-2011, 03:46 PM	#1
CallOfCth'reader Cultist Posts: 196 Karma: 8624438 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: UK Device: Sony PRS 505, Kobo Mini, Kobo Glo, Kobo Forma, Kindle DX	Archiving books (and magazines) - best way? I've got a lot of old paper books which I don't want to keep (mainly for space reasons), but I'd love to have them in electronic format. Unfortunately, I've yet to find any of them in digital print. The only option open to me, for the moment at least, is to archive them myself. The ultimate aim, when I get round to it, is to convert the archived books to LRF and/or EPUB format. What is the best way to initially archive them, for when I (eventually, maybe) convert them to LRF/EPUB in the future? I'm thinking scan the pages, and then stitch them up into a PDF file. I've read that PDF's aren't good to OCR from though, so what are my options? Save each page as a JPG? A lot of the books are 20-40 years old, and the magazines about 20+ years old, so the pages are various shades of...um...sepia. When I save the page scans, do I just save them 'as is' and do contrast tweaking when I eventually OCR them?