Turning Books into PDFs

[Airogue]

Hey everyone,

This is my first post on this forum. One or two of you may know me from the WWIIOL game forums.

I recently purchased some 1930-40's maintenance manuals. They include how to fix avionics, how to repair structures and fabric, and how to build a homebuilt aircraft. The are all based on technology available at the time, so no complicated computers, CNC machines, or even some mechanically luxuries that are common place today.

Rare books, and totally worth the money.

I want to scan these books as they are government publications and disperse them on the internet. That way these books are never lost to history. Do any of you scan your manuals? How do you do it with out destroying the book? Often scanned books show warping or other page deformities, and I want to scan them to the best quality possible, and have two versions of each available (Quality version and internet friendly version). I am even willing to send them to a professional company to have them scanned. Afterwards I will donate the books to an aviation museum. I want to make sure copies are put our there for everyone to have and use prior to me donating them.

Any advice would be much appreciated. 8)

 

[fnqvmuch]

good on you for doing this thing ...
fwiw, i recently bit the bullet and after some consultation with the community locally and abroad, dismantled a spare-parts book ( peugeot,'50's and maybe unique ... ) to put it through a flat bed scanner,then bagged the pages as archivally as possible and posted the contents via picasa, with those wanting it in any better quality being invited to contact me for a disc of it hi-res. in five months more than 50 views and no requests, so i dunno ...
Picasa Web Albums - steven king - Image Reference

 

[N4521U]

If you do not already have a PDF software on your computer. just google "995" an you will find a pdf freeware site. Can your book as a Jpeg for a record. Then open this with windows viewer, just double click the jpeg from "explorer" and it will open automatically. The do "control and "c" key" this will go right to print, select the pdf "printer" and it will convert to pdf. You may have to choose "fit to page" or something like this depending on the resolution in the scanner set-up. This is what I have been doing for a long time.

 

[tlbates]

Hi, i use ifan view it is a great program i use it to batch convert files (tiff, jpeg, and many others) to pdf or many other formats, then i use the PDF 995 to combine then into one file, it can be found at IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide
Good luck - Tom

 

[Moggster]

I use Open Office writer when I need to convert documents to PDF. In fact I use it when I need to use any MS Office type program. Best of all, it's free and perfectly legal to use.

OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite

 

[superkeith1872]

I highly recommend PDFILL over pdf995, it is also free and available on downloads.com. The 995 program is a pain in the ass at times and frustrating. I have scanned many books and please know, it is a lot of work. The easy ones are the old manuals in binders, you can remove them and easily run them through an automatic feed scanner, if the page end are brittle though, you have to do one page at a time on the flatbed. For bound books, the professional scanner people like google books, cut the pages free at the base and reglue them in or they use a special scanner. You can build your own google type book scanner by creating a cradle that will hold the book open at about a 90 degree angle, then you mount a camera that can photograph the page and you have a clear piece of plexiglass that you set on the page your photographing and that holds the page flat, so it's not bowed. Google uses an expensive store bought machine that has a camera pointing at both pages but if you use just 1 camera, it can still be done, do all the odd pages, then turn the book around and do the even pages. Also, the pdf program i spoke of above has several features for dealing with photo files and many formats. If you use a scanner and want high quality, scan at 300 dpi for pictures and schematics that have detail and 75 dpi for text pages. Scanning on a flatbed scanner is super time consuming and you truly have to be motivated to pull it off. You can figure about a minute per page going that route. Good Luck!

 

[vikingBerserker]

Some of the nicer business copiers have this capability. You feed a stack of papers like you were making copies but it scans it into a .pdf file instead to download onto a memory stick or send via e-mail.