DMS needs a technical library.
A digital library maybe…books are too cumbersome.
DMS should build an automated book scanner.
PDF searchable documents are awesome.
I’m for digital books, but nothing fully replaces hard copy books.
Besides, most of the books we need are not in digital form, and we don’t have the resources to put them in digital form (even if we weren’t going to get sued for doing it).
We ought to list the books we need. But, even doing that takes quite a bit of time.
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It’s not that bad you cut the spine out with a hydraulic paper cutter and run them through a larger scanner I did this for a few months.
How many pages would you say you processed in those months? How many shelf-feet of books? How long would it take for you to process 100 shelf-feet of books?
I wouldn’t care to cut the spine on a book that cost me hundreds of dollars.
The book get’s destroyed in the process that I used.
I did not do it full time and only on certain things but I was able to cut on the equipment approx 12 inches at a time of paper and put it in a high speed scanner. It would take a few min.
I’d think you might be violating copyright
If you were scanning your own books for your own use, then no violation. But I suspect you would be right concerning the scanning and sharing of the images in a space organized ‘library’.
Walter,
That sounds right. Perhaps ask Allen Wan as he is a patent attorney and may know such nuances about copyright law. There is another DMS member that I understand is a patent attorney and was recently mentioned in a thread along with Allen.
JAG “Perry Mason Theme Song” MAN
You know I asked Allen if he was an attorney, and he wanted to know why I asked. I mentioned that other thread. His answer about being an attorney was “I can neither confirm, nor deny”
Which I guess means he is either an attorney or a budding politician! 
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Walter,
Which I guess means he is either an attorney or a budding politician!
LOL!
Good call, that! My guess is that like a doctor, he probably doesn’t want to talk shop at DMS.
If so, I can’t say I blame him. I typically don’t reveal my IT background to a lot of people, but fortunately at DMS, most people are more knowledgeable than I am as that career track is a few years in my rear view mirror.
Thank God.
JAG “Help Desk Is Down the Hall” MAN
I am all for digital books and have largely switched to kindle for everything. However, for a situation like DMS, I think a print book collection is really the only cost effective and legal option.
- Kindle books are not easily transferrable
- Safari Books Online is $399 per year per user
- OverDrive (Amazon partner) offers a program for public libraries to borrow Kindle books, but they are restricted to Public Libraries. It is unclear if they would work with us. http://company.overdrive.com/files/Publications/DLR.pdf
With a print lending library we don’t really have any legal issues and many of the books could be donated.
As far as a book scanner…
Most of the books that are out of copyright have already been scanned and are freely available online
Document scanners do look like a fun project to build though:
The problem with digital books is that there are a vast number of old titles that are simply not available in digital form. Nor are they likely to ever be.
Even if their copyrights are long expired.
Project Gutenberg scans and/or accepts hundreds of out-of-copyright books every year. There is a process for submitting books to them after they have been confirmed to be out of copyright.
-Robert
We had a book scanner from the old space, I am not sure what happened to it but nobody used it. If I was in college I would be scanning all my books, copyright or not.
Lots and lots of Free e-books
Eric Ligman (Microsoft Sales) has posted another huge collection of free eBooks, lots of topics including Win10, Azure, O365, CRM – some end user/training focused while others are technical. Enjoy
Take a look at: https://archive.org/ and http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/
I found pdfs for some of my favorite databooks. It’s hit and miss but worth a look.
Anybody need a 1905 book on ore dressing?
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