Changing Regular Books Into Ebooks

[Noctorum]

I have a decent-sized physical library of books, and I'd like to scan them all into my computer, store them in as small of a filesize as possible, and use some kind of program to bind them all together.

 

The scanner I have is rather slow and takes alot of clicking, and doesn't support rapid-fire scanning.

 

So my two questions are,

 

1.) Whats the best format to store the images of the pages as?

 

2.) Is there any program to 'bind' an ebook as one file? (preferably free)

 

3.) Whats a good scanner for my uses?

 

Thanks all ,

 

~Alex

[borfast]

Well, I'd say you should store the images in JPEG format, use something like OpenOffice Writer (the equivalent of MS Word) to bind all the pages together and then make use of it's internal PDF exporter to export the document. You don't spend one cent and you can do everything you want

 

About the scanner, I can't help you there. I'm really not up to date in regards to scanners, sorry.

Edited May 30, 2004 by TCH-Raul

[TCH-Rob]

Doesn't your scanner and its software support OCR? I would scan as text then either convert to PDF Raul's way or convert to HTML and get a free e-Book maker off the web and create them that way. No images mean small file size.

[TCH-Don]

There was another post on converting books to electronic format

Changing Books To Pdf

that may be of interest.

[borfast]

Yes, I forgot the OCR possibility. Thanks, Rob

 

Don, good catch, I didn't recall that thread

[Madmanmcp]

Thanks Don, I was going to track down that thread but was busy setting up a new site for our Swimming Pool.

 

The one point that isn't addressed in that thread is the scanner. Now I have had a few over the years and I would say that most of them are very similar and have no preference. I would however go for a flatbed, a multi-feed is probably not necessary since you have a bound book and not single sheets and will need to lay the book down to scan.

[Madmanmcp]

Doesn't your scanner and its software support OCR?

 

Most software packages that come with scanners don't support OCR. You need to go out and purchase a program to do the OCR and conversion into an acceptable format. I use Omni-Pro.

[Deverill]

Most software packages that come with scanners don't support OCR. 

You're buying the wrong brands! Even my $79 cheapie has OCR. It's not spectacular but it would do well on a printed book. (Low end HP that's about 4 years old if you're interested)

Edited May 30, 2004 by TCH-Jim

[TCH-Don]

My own flatbed came with a version of TextBridge that worked ok for text but not graphics.

So I bought their better version and it handles both text and images very well.

It was worth it for me.

[Madmanmcp]

I tried Textbridge years ago and it did not do what I needed. Single page of text only was ok but still required editing. What I needed was multi-page, multi-content (text and graphic). Omnipage was not perfect but was the best in the group when I tested it. Things may have change since then but it still does what I need and it plugs right into Office documents.

[waynemac]

Just wondering if you would scan these books for future reading or posting on the net etc. I prefer to read paper than monitor screen text. Call me old fashioned.

 

Wayne