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Originally Posted by gazza
So my idea is to scan in a book a day and proof-read -- a pleasant hobby --
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Sorry, but I had a good chuckle at this. The first book will be an amusing diversion. The second book will be a technical exercise. The third book will be tedious. The rest will be drudgery.
There's a reason people get paid for proof-reading, believe me. Obtaining the raw text is quick and easy. Transforming that into something truly readable that is similar to a professionally-produced book is a lot of work. Do not under-estimate the amount of effort involved here.
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Originally Posted by Daithi
In my case, I'm scanning old books that I don't want to destroy. This means cutting off the binding and using a flatbed scanner is out of the question. I don't even want to press real hard on the book to get it to lie flat, because I'm afraid I will break the binding and have my pages falling out.
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Do what Google does. Use a camera with copystand lights instead of a scanner. Lay the book on one of those book stands that allows the book to open at 90 degrees and position the camera perpendicular to the page. If you just have 1 camera, photograph all the even pages first, then reposition it and do all the odd ones. You may find it helps to get a piece of glass to place over each page to flatten it (google uses a fancy infra-red auxiliary scanner to detect page geometry without flattening pages).
Here's a pic of Google's scanning method. You can do something similar without all the fancy extras they use. Since all you're doing is turning pages inbetween each capture this method places a
lot less strain on a book's binding than flatbed techniques.