Branko of Teleread came up with some
interesting statistics suggesting that - unlike distributed proofreaders - many of us would love to digitize their own personal libraries.
If you've ever tried to scan a full-length book without having access to a high-end $150k+ scanner, you'll understand why professional proofreaders who deal with books every day are not so fond of the idea of scanning their own content. Manual scanning and OCR'ing is a pain since both tasks are time-consuming and usually prone to errors. Now, as many of you know, Google
is working with various major libraries to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them online. But don't expect some poor first-year student to sit all day and night in front of a low-cost scanner flipping pages. These libraries have access to fully automated page-turning and scanning devices that produces high quality digital images of bound materials (nondestructive) at throughput rates as high as 2400 pages per hour.
It'd be great if one day you could just visit a Kinko's outlet and rent a
Kirtas scanning device for a short period of time. Only then would I be willing to turn my dusty library into a bunch of e-book.