Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google's Book Scanning Technology Revealed

Posted by kdawson on from the real-page-turner dept.

blee37 writes "Last March we discussed Google's patent for a rapid book scanning system. This article describes and provides pictures of how the system works in practice. Google is secretive, but the system's inner workings were apparently divulged by University of Tokyo researchers who wrote a research article on essentially identical technology. There are also videos of robotic page flippers and information about how Google wants to use music to help humans flip pages."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. MRI technology? by maillemaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I often wondered if it would be possible for a book to be scanned while closed, using some kind of MRI technology that digitally sliced the book page by page, picking up on the density difference between the ink and the paper slice by slice.

    --
    A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
  2. Build your own.... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Simply set up a rig with 2 digital cameras and a plexiglass V to photograph 2 pages at a time. It's quite fast and cheap.

    http://www.diybookscanner.org/

    Works great. I built one to turn a couple of rare automotive books into PDF so I dont damage a $180.00 book in the garage.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Build your own.... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What idiot would use a $1800 laptop in the garage to view a PDF?

      Let me guess, you change your oil wearing a cashmere sweater and silk shirts as well.

      Nope. I risk my $40.00 fujitsu tablet PC that views pdf's just fine but has not enough Horsepower to do much else. works awesome as a garage PC to read PDF's and read the engine codes with my RS232-ODBII scanner/logger.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. We used to call them "Service Bureaus" by kriston · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back when we called them "Service Bureaus" book scanning was fast, easy, and cheap, as long as you didn't want the book back.

    You deliver your book, magazine, phone book, map, large format document, or whatever to a Service Bureau.
    They will then use a paper saw and cut the binding off and the other three sides to make perfectly smooth edges.
    Then they put the whole mess into a hopper. The hopper feeds the pages to a scanner.
    When it's done, flip the pile over and put it back into the hopper to get the odd-numbered pages into the scanner.

    What you get back is your original book (as a pile of pages with no binding) and a CD-ROM of its contents in both original TIFF and OCRd text files. Now you can get them as PDF/A and DejaVu formats.

    I suppose Google's point is that they don't want to ruin the books, or maybe they are so proud of their 3D-scanner enough to use it at all costs. But think of this: there are usually several thousands, perhaps millions, of copies of the books I've seen in Google's library, so destroying one copy of the book seems fair enough.

    --

    Kriston