Recommendations for portable 'book' scanner?

[Cassady]

Salutations!

Currently writing up my dissertation - and if things work out according to plan, I will be off to the UK and AUS for some research time, about a week each, in June/July.

I plan on spending some of that time in University libraries, looking for hard to find sources (legislation/parliamentary bills etc).

I'm considering purchasing a portable scanner to take along - one that you can move over the book/document (as opposed to a Scansnap Doxie etc., that must be fed pages) to capture images and convert to PDF.

Anyone bought one recently that works well?

 

[ColdCase]

Think about using one of those apps that use the phone camera to take a photo as a scanner, if you have a smart phone, and if libraries permit.... At the worst, take a photo and at least you will have a readable image. In the end, they seem to work as well as those tiny portable scanners.

 

[Cassady]

Think about using one of those apps that use the phone camera to take a photo as a scanner, if you have a smart phone, and if libraries permit.... At the worst, take a photo and at least you will have a readable image. In the end, they seem to work as well as those tiny portable scanners.

Thanks. I have plenty of those - they work fine with shorter items, but any lengthy scan project is a PITA - and with thick books, you need three arms!

Figured the benefit of the scanner, if I understand it correctly, means you can lie it flat on the book/page, thereby also keeping it open- and then physically slide it down/across. That (again - in my head) appears to be an easier option than the iPhone/App approach?

 

[glenthompson]

Thanks. I have plenty of those - they work fine with shorter items, but any lengthy scan project is a PITA - and with thick books, you need three arms!

Figured the benefit of the scanner, if I understand it correctly, means you can lie it flat on the book/page, thereby also keeping it open- and then physically slide it down/across. That (again - in my head) appears to be an easier option than the iPhone/App approach?

The scanners of that type available some years ago had bad firmware for handling skewing and varying speed scans. Don't know how the quality is these days as I haven't looked for any.

Scanning with your phone is tricky but with a good app probably will do as good of a job. I use Scanner Pro when I don't have my ScanSnap with me and it does a good job. Corrects tombstones and skews. Quality is good enough for text.