Scanning services have been a frequent request from library users and we are happy to announce the arrival of BookScan, a color scanner which is available for self service and which is free.
With BookScan, you can send scanned images to your e-mail address, where they will arrive as attachments, or you can save them at the library on your flash drive.
BookScan can convert the scanned image to a number of file formats including: pdf, jpg, and tiff. It can even translate printed text into Word .doc format so it can be utilized in your word processor*.
And it is VERY easy to use as shown in this video from the Fairfield Public Library:
Please come by and try BookScan — it’s located just inside our front door.
Bill Uricchio – Library Director
*Note: As with any text converted from an image file, users will have to examine the results very carefully. In tests we discovered that BookScan did not covert very large fonts on a chapter title page and instead left blanks. Also, page “71” at the bottom was converted to “7i” because the original utilized an uppercase “I” instead of a “1”. Anyone who has used Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software will recognize these as typical conversion issues. Happily, the remainder of the text on the page was flawless.