Book-Digitizing Robots

Makarand writes "Robotic digitization systems are the new help available to complete voluminous scanning tasks. Robots that can turn the pages of books and newspaper volumes and attain scanning speeds of more than 1000 pages/hour are now available. They even use puffs of compressed air to separate sticky pages!"

Freedom 'Bots

[rdewald]

I think there is a touch of naivete in this notion:

"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa," Keller said. "Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"

I am not sure it would. It might turn them on to the idea of thinking for themselves, though. That could have interesting consequences. Unfortunately, just this very possiblity is threatening to those who are now profiting from their ignorance. These people are likely in a position to be gatekeepers for the dissemination of information.

But, having a robot do something which is enhanced by mindless repetition is a natural robotic application. Then having that application be something that could enable political liberation is a interesting twist of the old "robots in service to humanity" ideals. I'm not so sure that those holding the reins are going to be so interested in this--call me cynical.

What I would like to see is a similar device for converting analog recordings, in whatever form be at tape, vinyl, wax cylinders, to an open digitized format and then have those recording made available in like fashion. It might be just as interesting to turn those kids in Africa on to Mozart, or oral arguments from the Supreme Court.

Hard to read on a screen.

[Obscenity]

After a long night of coding or sleeping for that matter, it is hard to focus on the text on the screen. Scrolling down is another matter, i end up putting text up to 200% zoom in Mozilla. So now we can all print out these digatized copies and read them. This is neat stuff sure, but reading from a screen is hard, and most people will print it out anyways. The good thing is that people can now download it from the net. Assuming it is hosted on a site.

Re:Great, but..

[daves]

... or until someone donates one to Project Gutenberg.

Rent these suckers out!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got an apartment and storage unit full of books. Set one of these babies up at a Kinko's kinda place for rental, I'll digitize 'em all and live the kind of minimalist-yet-scholarly life I've always dreamed of :)

Really, it's ridiculous that I've got 140 gigabytes of storage in my apartment, and all these shelves of paper. (And don't bitch to me about reading on screen, a tablet with high-resolution screen displaying large type wouldn't be too bad, and digital paper ain't far away.)

Re:Freedom 'Bots

[CodeHog]

"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa," Keller said. "Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"

Think about the power of bringing food and water to little communities in the middle of Africa. Now that's powerful.

Project Gutenberg

[Mechanik]

What do we need to do to get one of these donated to Project Gutenberg? Right now one of the biggest things holding them up is a lack of volunteers to manually scan the books.


Mechanik

Re:Great, but..

[Daniel Boisvert]

All it takes is one *really* large project. If somebody like the Library of Congress started scanning/digitizing their collection (I know--subject/verb agreement :), it would obviate the need for just about any smaller libraries to do so. You don't need thousands of libraries to scan the same book, you only need one, and then you can replicate electronically. Surely there are specialty libraries around that have unique collections, but again--all you need is one...

I didn't RTFA, but this could be useful not only for developing countries, but as a "force-multiplier" of sorts for smaller community libraries. En masse digitizing of published works would allow smaller libraries to compete on a more even footing with larger ones, without having to invest loads of money into their collections and facilities to hold them.

Any well-heeled library patrons out there want to donate some money earmarked for one of these things to the large library of your choice?

Archival Projects

[borkus]

This would be awesome for records/document archiving. I knew a guy who worked at our State Library who had to catalog courthouse records across the state. He'd go out to some remote county where all the marriage, land and court records were on paper and try to figure out what they had. Some of the records went back to before the American Revolution. In nearly all cases, the only records were on paper.

If he could drag this robot along to a courthouse and scan the records over a couple of weeks, it would allow him digitize that information quickly. Not only would the digital copies be easier to search, they would be easier to preserve. One courthouse, where their file room was in the basement, nearly lost all of its old records to a flood.

Get these to librarians ASAP!

[l0rd]

Once librarians get their hands on these they could be the new b00kw@r3z G0dz. Just think about searching the content of your library on kazaa.

By that time someone will have thought up copy protection ;)

Re:Freedom 'Bots

[qoncept]

Wouldn't they need something capable of viewing these digitized formats first?

Does it cost that much?

[zebadee]

The article says it would become cost effective for 5.5 million pages. Later it says it costs between $1 - $4 per book in the Far East. So if you estimate a book to have around 300 pages, doing the digitising manually would be $18333-$73333 per 5.5 million pages (ie 5500000/300 multiplied by cost per book). From the way article is written I expected it to cost ALOT more. I guess the proof reading cost for manual conversion could be high?

Re:Freedom 'Bots

[gurps_npc]

I think your concept of converting analog to digital is ridiculous.

Analog by definition is ALWAYS readable. It is the SINGLE format that is by definiton OPEN, can always be understood by anyone, and can stan the test of time. Aliens could discover an analog recording 50 billion years from now and decode it without knowing ANYTHING else about our culture. But right now, data encoded 25 years ago in an open digital format is often incredibally hard to translate to a usable form.

Digital requires people to understand the digital format. The ONLY advantage to it is quality via the suprression of unintended noises. But if we are copying something that started out as Analog, then the quality improvement is minimal at best.

DO not blindly use Digital for things that Analof is far better.

Re:Hmm...

[Phantasmo]

But if you could just take the magazines, stick 'em in this robot, then share 'em, it could hurt the publishing industry the way it's hurt the recording industry.

The music industry hasn't be hurt by filesharing, it has been helped.
People want the CD case, the inside jacket filled with graphics and lyrics.

Similarly, most people hate reading off of a computer monitor. Lots of magazines give away some (or all) of their articles on their webpage already. If anything this'll inspire more subscriptions.

Of course, all of this assumes that some magazine geek is going to shell out the cash for an OCR robot.

Re:Freedom 'Bots

[Tackhead]

> Analog by definition is ALWAYS readable. It is the SINGLE format that is by definiton OPEN, can always be understood by anyone, and can stan the test of time. Aliens could discover an analog recording 50 billion years from now and decode it without knowing ANYTHING else about our culture. But right now, data encoded 25 years ago in an open digital format is often incredibally hard to translate to a usable form.

Hey Glortzotnik! Check this out! These humans, they used lasers to inscribe little hills and valleys in aluminum discs 12" in diameter for video, then smaller hills and valleys in aluminum discs 5" in diameter for audio, and then they used lasers to start chemical reactions that changed the color of a dye later in big sloppy round holes with lots of fuzziness around the edges for video again.

Okay, nothing wrong with that, but the funny part - get this - they called the laser paintings and the chemical dyes "digital", as if it were somehow different from scratching clay with a stick or a wax cylinder with a needle. Laugh riot, these humans!

To a DSP engineer, everything is analog.

Typical shortsighted response

[siskbc]

Here's a hint, it's Africa. They can't eat books!

Yeah, but if they don't learn to read, they're going to be stuck with the same subsistence agriculture that hasn't worked too fucking well form them recently. That or UN or NGO handouts that only serve to strengthen the oppressive regimes that are torturing these people, because little of the aid that reaches the docks reaches the people thanks to rampant corruption.

Here's the current process:

1. Africa has crappy food production

2. West sends food

3. Food is intercepted by dictator's thugs.

4. Dictator sells food or uses it to extort loyalty

5. Dictator becomes rich and powerful

6. People become dependent upon the west and their dictator for food.

7. People get worse at farming, continue to starve, and dictator becomes yet stronger.

8. Goto 1.

Seems to me that education and empowerment might be part of the way to break that shitty cycle. Keeping people poor and incapable of supporting themselves isn't.

Re:Freedom 'Bots

[konch]

actually, Africans such as the Igbo people of Nigeria have always had democratic institutions. And most Africans I know are very well informed. The people who need to learn more about democracy are the Americans. They've got a long ways to go.