Books provide you with access to content from times long past. Without them, we would have little more than stories, presumptions and lore to go by. Books do their job dutifully, with some books even enduring thousands of years of use.
Despite these facts, a book is anything but sturdy. In fact, books are extremely fragile from the day that they are printed and their durability withers over time. After a while, the only way to prevent a book from crumbling into dust is to lock it away in a vacuum sealed chamber, never to be used again for any practical purposes. This poses a problem, especially for rare books, which simply cannot be replaced. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to this problem: book scanning.
What is book scanning?
Book scanning is a specialized category of document scanning wherein, as the name suggests, you scan books to create digital copies of them.
Scanning won't make my book any less fragile, so how can it help me?
You can lock away your original copy
A rare, fragile or otherwise important book has earned the right to be protected. This means keeping it away from the destructive powers of rough, oily human hands. By scanning a book, securing its protection doesn't have to be a compromise because you can still access its content without letting people touch it.
You will never have to dig through a mass of archives – and damage other books – to find the one that you are looking for
As your inventory of physical books grows, it will inevitably become more difficult. This means that you will have to constantly reorganize your books. Also, when you are looking for a single book, you are likely to touch, accidentally drop or damage other books in the process. The wear and tear caused by this can be avoided when your books are digitized because you'll never have to physically handle them.
Countless people can access the knowledge contained within your book in an instant
As an added bonus, scanning your book significantly broadens the access to its content. For example, you could provide everyone in your building access to the book at one time. If you wanted to, you could even share your book with people around the world in seconds.
How to complete the book scanning process
If you have a large number of books on hand, you probably don't want to scan them all yourself because this is a tedious, time consuming task. One great option is to hire a professional book scanner to get the job done. After this, invest in a scanner that can convert the content within future books into digital files.
Make sure that you use a scanner designed to fully protect the content in your books
Scanning books cannot be properly completed with a regular scanner. If you have ever tried to scan a book with a regular scanner, then you know how using one results in cut off words, blurred letters and damage to the book that you are trying to preserve. You need a specialized book scanning tool that can avoid all of these problems. To that end, it should have the following features:
- High resolution scanning capabilities (at least 300DPI)
- High-speed scanning capabilities (you've got thousands of pages to scan, and you don't want this process to take forever)
- A design specific to the needs of books
Use modern technology to protect your book
Making your book inaccessible isn't the only way to protect it. Scanning your books allows you to get the best of everything.
