A Device for Automated Scanning of Books

Abstract

Fast access to older theses and dissertations is still difficult, because they are often available only in printed form. If in digital form, content of these books could be available more easily. However, scanning of bounded books is a time-consuming and costly process - the pages of the book must be turned manually. At the Institute for Print and Media Technology, a device was developed, which can turn the sides of a bounded book automatically. While the book is scanned, the operator is free for other tasks, as for example the control and revision of already scanned material and the input of corresponding data records (meta data) into a catalogue system. The presentation gives an overview of the technical functionality, application possibilities and limits of the device. A second main point is the presentation of a draft for the integration of the device into a software based workflow. After the optical character recognition an examination of the scanned pages of the book should be done within this workflow. Missing pages must be recognised, and the operator is informed about these failures. In another step the structure of the book is analysed. Among other things this information can be used to produce an XML-File. Thus the publication and archiving of the thesis as an ETD in online data bases can be supported easily.