Stanford digitization project in NYTimes

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Monday's New York Times included an interesting article on an impressive 
new automated scanning machine in use at Stanford University.  The machine 
literally turns the pages of books of every format while scanning to 
graphic images or OCR text of extraordinarily high quality.  The potential 
for automating the conversion of large quantities of text is immediately 
obvious.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/12/technology/12TURN.html
	(requires simple registration)

The Evelyn Wood of Digitized Book Scanners

May 12, 2003
By JOHN MARKOFF 

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 10 - Putting the world's most
advanced scholarly and scientific knowledge on the Internet
has been a long-held ambition for Michael Keller, head
librarian at Stanford University. But achieving this goal
means digitizing the texts of millions of books, journals
and magazines - a slow process that involves turning each
page, flattening it and scanning the words into a computer
database. 

Mr. Keller, however, has recently added a tool to his
crusade. On a recent afternoon, he unlocked an unmarked
door in the basement of the Stanford library to demonstrate
the newest agent in the march toward digitization. Inside
the room a Swiss-designed robot about the size of a sport
utility vehicle was rapidly turning the pages of an old
book and scanning the text. The machine can turn the pages
of both small and large books as well as bound newspaper
volumes and scan at speeds of more than 1,000 pages an
hour. 

(For full text, see link above)