What to do about all my books? Help??

My only concern would be copyright issues. If they are in the public domain, just send them on as you’d be easily able to access them again. Keep reference books you think you really will refer to from time to time. If you have books written before 1960, post them for sale here first. There are some Homeschool librarians that would love to have first shot at them. ;0) (me, me, me, Robin, et al) ;0)

Becca<><

PS seems a duplexing scanner/printer may work for copying small amounts of pages that could be filed for future reference if entire books wouldn’t be scanned.

First, if the book is not out of copyright then to be legal you would need to either keep or destroy the original book. You could not legally scan and keep a copy and then give or sell the physical book to someone else. So that may or may not solve your storage problem. 🙂

The hard part about scanning books is that you either have to cut the binding off and run all the pages through a sheet fed scanner or take the time to place one page at a time on the scanner glass.

Many scanners and all-in-one printer/scanners are available that have both sheet feeders and single page capability. Some of the sheet feeders will even do both sides of the page at once, but only for unbound pages, of course.

There are also some do-it-yourself (DIY) scanners being built specifically for books. The book sits in a cradle and two digital cameras take pictures of both open pages at once. There’s a whole site dedicated to working on DIY book scanners, but it would take a lot fiddling to get somethign working that way. There is someone selling a kit of DIY book scanner parts but you still have to put it together and it’s nearly $500 without the cameras.

A couple years ago there was a company that annouced plans to bring a similar product to market at an inexpensive price but it materialized. I’m not aware of anything out there commercially that isn’t in the thousands of dollars.

Ok, now I am wondering if my printer/scanner is one of those types. I have a HP officejet Pro L7580.

Looks like the L7580 has both a flatbed and sheet fed scanner. I think it only does one side of the page for the document feeder so you would have to do a lot of page rearranging unless it comes with software to deal with that.

Anyway, I don’t mind taking apart the book binder if it would work in my printer.

Since that basically destroys the book it would help take care of copyright issues.  The trick is firguring out a good way to cut the binding off. I tried a table saw once but it left the edge pretty ragged, which would cause problems in the sheet feeder. The easiest way I’ve tried is to take the book to an office supply store where you can pay them to do it with a big cutter. Of course, I really have a hard time destroying books but I’ve done it in some special cases.

If you have a Staples store near you they have a big cutter. Most print shops should have one too and will often do cutting for a small fee.

By the way, here is the book scanner I’d really like.

Copyright is a major issue.

on another note, I would hate to see quality books destroyed just to make scanned copies. You might look into selling your copies and purchasing ebook versions. Simpler and the books aren’t destroyed. Especially books that are harder to come by.

I have over 5000 books in my home and realize they can creep into every available spot, but I am not willing to part with them. They are the start of my future library! I see myself as a book rescuer of sorts.

Oh, please, please, PLEASE do not destroy books!  Especially out-of-print &/or hard to find ones!!!  The thought just breaks my heart.    Like TailorMade said, there are many of us out there who are trying to preserve those types of books, and some of us are really not into electronic versions and *need* those real books!  I like missceegee’s idea: Sell the real books and buy the Kindle versions.  For what you might sell it for, you may even make a “profit” by selling first and buying the e-books.

I must add that I don’t advocate destroying books either. I was just giving all the options. I have only destroyed a few in a special case, and that was with books that were in print and readily available inexpensively. I certainly would never do it with a book that had any scarcity.