I have quite a number of books in my print library that will never make it to Logos. I would like to transition some of them to digital so I can make personal books in Logos. What are the rules in regards to this?
I would like to transition some of them to digital so I can make personal books in Logos. What are the rules in regards to this?
The legalities vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Providing legal advice in the forums isn't advisable.
I would like to transition some of them to digital so I can make personal books in Logos. What are the rules in regards to this? The legalities vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Providing legal advice in the forums isn't advisable.
Thanks JT
For the sake of argument, let's assume the books are all in the public domain.
Here's my actual process for digitizing books:
1. Cut off the spine. I use an industrial paper cutter to do this in one fell swipe. The cutter cost me about $100.
2. Scan the pages. For this I bought a Scansnap IX500. Runs about $500-600, but it scans super fast. Can scan a 300 page book in about 10 minutes depending on your DPI settings.
3. Once you have your scans you need to assemble them into a PDF and then OCR them. This can be cheap or expensive, quick or time-consuming. You can use Adobe Acrobat ($15 monthly subscription) to convert the scans to a PDF, assemble them into one document, and then OCR the text so its searchable and selectable. Or, if you prefer a lot more control over the process, you can buy a dedicated OCR program like ABBYY FineReader 15 for $200. This lets you tweak almost every detail of the process. (A warning though, it can be a heck of a rabbit hole to go down if you want things perfect. If you're okay with 99% accuracy, Adobe is fine. If you want that extra 0.8%, you're gonna pay a lot more and devote a lot more time to the process.)
4. After that you have your PDF with searchable and selectable text. If you use ABBYY, you can export it into a Word document that looks just like the original page, or into other formats that work with various e-readers. Once in Word you can convert it to a Logos Personal Book.
Alternatively, if you prefer a non-destructive approach, you can buy a special scanner like the Opticbook 4800 or the Czur Scanner. These require you to turn and scan each page. I have an older version of the Opticbook and at the 300 dpi BW setting I could scan a 300 page book in about an hour. Neither are cheap, averaging around $500 each.
Using the processes I've described here, I've personally scanned over 100,000 pages and converted many of them into searchable PDFs. Most of them I chopped off the spines and scanned them that way, though for books I didn't want to destroy I used my Opticbook 3600 (an older version of the 4800) to scan them by hand.
Certainly not cheap, with the quickest method coming out to around $650 before you even get your first book finished, but if its what you want to do, its a fun little hobby!
That was a fun and informative post! Thanks!
This is the step I refuse to cooperate with. Too many books are too valuable to be destroyed ...I can agree with your recommendation for others.
1. Cut off the spine. I use an industrial paper cutter to do this in one fell swipe. The cutter cost me about $100. This is the step I refuse to cooperate with. Too many books are too valuable to be destroyed ...I can agree with your recommendation for others.
I guess this is where the alternate step comes in handy:
[quote]Alternatively, if you prefer a non-destructive approach, you can buy a special scanner like the Opticbook 4800 or the Czur Scanner. These require you to turn and scan each page. I have an older version of the Opticbook and at the 300 dpi BW setting I could scan a 300 page book in about an hour. Neither are cheap, averaging around $500 each.
For the sake of argument, let's assume the books are all in the public domain. Here's my actual process for digitizing books:
I've done some of the same stuff. I have many books (about 10 gig) now in searchable pdf files on my personal storage drives. I use something like "Copernic" or such to search the pdf files.... to find info. I don't give them to anyone... they are for my personal use only and I have a personal responsibility about how I use the digitized book.
One thing I'll mention.... I believe as long as I owned the text book.... this process is fine ... AS LONG AS I don't put the scanned books into the public domain. Once the scanned or digitized book gets into the public domain... I believe.... I have violated the contract with me purchasing the "text" book or copyright or something. I am thinking it would be illegal.
I contacted a couple of publishers and even one aurthor ... they did not have a digitized copy of their book.... yet all of them would not give me permission to make their books public, even if I paid them for the use.
So... in Logos... once a book is compiled into a Personal Book in Logos and uploaded... then it is saved on their servers. I then can download it to my other computers.... so... I'm not understanding how "public" that is. I'm a thinking... it's still private to me only.
I may be wrong.... maybe others can change my mind.
Then again, with public domain books, I've found that simply taking a picture of the page with my iPhone and then bringing the images into Adobe Acrobat (which I subscribe to) will perform OCR very well, without the expense of a dedicated scanner.
And, I no longer attempt to use Personal Books. It does give a nice result, when it works, but when I reload Logos – which is sometimes necessary – I find the books are no longer available unless I go through them and recompile them.
Instead, I put such books into Notebooks. The book title is the Notebook name, and each chapter is its own note; the chapter title begins with 1, 2, 3, etc., so they they stay in the proper order.
This would not be sufficient for academic use, but then, neither would a Personal Book, unless you managed to keep the original page numbers noted in the text.
when I reload Logos – which is sometimes necessary – I find the books are no longer available unless I go through them and recompile them.
For clarification: If you had desired to, you could have uploaded them to FL. In that case, you would have been able to download them without compiling again.
I agree with you MJ, but understand why some would do this. I have many books that have sentimental signatures from my ancestors that I want to especially keep in one piece.
5. Once in MS Word, Find & Replace 'modem' with 'modern'. If the book had script drop-caps, search for 'Ford Jesus'.
I became a book destroyer at a very eventful time in my life. It enabled me to keep the bulk of the book in one location, and just carry the portion that I wanted for that day.
I often ripped my books apart in college, even $200.00 books. I was paying far more for the class than the book. Spreading a chapter out so you can view the whole chapter at once is very helpful, sometimes. Or to have the appendixes separate. In study groups, when I spread my color coded chapter out across a table, students read my book instead of their own. After they got over the shock.
Sometimes before I make a big move, I digitize a book so I can bring it with me. Others I leave behind intact for others.
Sometimes, I am more important than paper. Yes, what is written on the paper can change lives and we don't want to be selfish. But sometimes, we need to remember that we are more important than paper. Books are tools. They meant to be used.
If anyone is trying to use a cellphone, a Scanner Bin is a cheap way to get a better scan.
https://scannerbin.com/products/scanner-bin-the-clever-document-scanning-solution
