Have you ever tried to scan in book pages only to find that there is an annoying “shadow” area in the gutter and text is distorted either side? Enter Plustek with its OpticBook 3600 flatbed scanner. This scanner incorporates Shadow Elimination Element (SEE) Technology that allows a book to lie completely flat on the scanning glass. The result is a scanned image without the dark book gutter, shadows or text distortions that are commonly found when copying or scanning books on a usual flatbed scanner.
Why digitise books when most are bound by copyright laws? Not all material is copyrighted and providing you let the publishers know of your (educational) intention they will often agree to limited copying. The reasons for scanning book pages are quite varied:
- To digitise information for data exchange, retrieval, and storage
- To digitise books/text to share with others
- To create e-books
- To aid revision and distribution of study materials
- To digitise and archive collections of rare and precious books
- To save on physical storage space
- To facilitate text-to-speech software to enable both visually and hearing impaired learners to listen to books on CD, or via MP3.
OpticBook 3600 handles up to A4 (216 x 297 mm) sized books and connects using fast USB 2. It can output in 24 or 48-bit colour and 8 or 16-bit greyscale. It measures: (W)453 x (D)285 x (H)105 mm and weighs in at 3.4 kg. It can be used for normal scanning jobs but with a low optical resolution of only 1200dpi (dots per inch) it will not yield the results you will get from an all-purpose flatbed scanner. Indeed this scanner cannot scan any transparent materials like slide transparencies or film negatives. However, it comes with user-friendly software which permits, fast and simple PDF conversion and includes an efficient OCR (optical character recognition) element which saves directly to MS Word and Excel. I particularly like the automatic page rotation feature which also ensures page images are saved in their correct order. Plustek claim it can easily scan a 250 page book in under one hour.
The Plustek does scan books very well, enabling you to scan or copy text very close to the book spine and thus avoid cutting books or damaging book bindings. The result is a fine looking PDF or accurate OCR results. The seven, large, clearly labelled buttons on top of the scanner make scanning books or multi-page documents an absolute doddle. Although I cannot recommend the OpticBook 3600 as an all-purpose flatbed scanner, for book copying you would be hard pressed to find better for the price.
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Contacts and Prices
Plustek Inc
Tel: 01952 210280
www.plustek.com
Price: £165.00 +VAT
Reseller: Centerprise Stand F20
Tel: 01256 378132 |
