HIGH-SPEED DIGITIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF LIBRARIES

An interesting reading from ShelfLife, No. 140 (January 22 2004), about How to Digitize Eight Million Books:

"HIGH-SPEED DIGITIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF LIBRARIES
A robotic scanner, custom built for Stanford University, is systematically digitizing parts of the university library's vast collection -- over eight million volumes. Resembling a giant copier, the 4DigitalBooks robot quickly and automatically scans about 1,000 pages per hour -- a complete 300-page book in 20 minutes. Stanford University Librarian Michael Keller, who oversees the project, says, "It's rigorously consistent -- the page is always flat, the image is always good, and software conversion allows you to index the text so you can search it." Rare books, however, are another matter. "We're very concerned about (them), so we haven't put any manuscripts on the robot. Instead, we use a technology based on the same cameras, (but turn) the pages by hand." In the next 10 to 20 years, Keller believes more and more information will be presented in digital form. "I suspect books will continue to be useful and important, and we'll (still) see them published. But people will find more and more of their information online, and the number of books will decrease." Stanford, for instance, is planning a science and engineering library whose goal is to have no books on the shelves. "We'll still need physical libraries," says Keller, "because people want to meet with one another. They want to work on
projects collaboratively, and they also like to work in clusters and groups." (The Book & The Computer 15 Dec 2003) http://www.honco.net/os/index.html"