Book Scanning

Book scanning is the process of converting a physical book into electronic images, usually into pdf format although tiff and jpeg are other options available.

Once a book has been scanned it becomes much more versatile in terms of distribution, on screen reading and reproduction. Optical character recognition (OCR) can also be used which then allows the text to be edited, reformatted and searched. It can also be imported into other applications.

Scanning Bound Books

Our book scanners are manually operated by an experienced member of staff, all pages are carefully turned before a glass platen holds the page flat for scanning. The spine of the book sits in the middle of a moving cradle which ensures the book lies as flat as possible during the scanning process. Scanning is normally carried out at 300dpi although for special applications we can go as high as 800dpi. After scanning we use various software processes to crop, deskew and edit the images in any way that will improve the appearance before finally releasing it to the desired format where a final quality check is carried out.

Destructive Scanning

For book scanning on a low budget, we do have the capability to remove the bindings of a book using a heavy duty guillotine. This is possible on books with a maximum thickness of 40mm. The book then effectively becomes a loose leaf document which can be passed through a document scanner. Whilst this may not be the best solution for very rare or valuable books it can be useful where a replacement book could be obtained at reasonable cost.

How Much Does Book Scanning Cost?

The cost of scanning a book can vary quite considerably and is dependant on a number of factors. Consideration is given to the size and age of a book, whether a bi-tonal, grey scale or colour scan is required and at what resolution you require the images to be. If you would like an idea of price for a particular project then please contact us on 0845 658 9501 or complete our online form. We provide quotations without obligation and in most cases offer to do a sample scan so that you can see for yourself the quality of the scanned image.