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Book photocopier

 A photocopier that copies books (or magazines)
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Copying a book is always tedious. Put book on photocopier, push button, wait, turn page. Repeat a zillion times.

The only way around this is to cut the spine and put the pages into the automatic feeder, but you wouldn't want to do that with most books.

Why not have a photocopier that automatically turns the pages and copies the whole thing?

It could also have a setting for how many pages you want copied: "12 pages from this page onwards". This way you can copy one article from a magazine, for example. Make students' lives easier.

—herilane, Feb 19 2002

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       in the UK you are breaking copyright law with regard to books.
—po, Feb 19 2002
   

       Isn't there a rule about being allowed to copy up to x pages, as long it is under y% of the whole book, and for personal use only? That's the way it works in Sweden.
—herilane, Feb 19 2002
   

       yes you are right - I think its about 5% but I'm guessing now. I imagine copying a magazine is OK though.
—po, Feb 19 2002
   

       Actually a decent digital camera will take a quite readable photo of a book. Just take hand-held pictures of the book pages next to a window for light.   

       I do this at work sometimes and also take digital pics of whiteboards after meetings. We even bought a "staff camera" for this purpose. A Kodak DC4800. Works great.
—bristolz, Feb 19 2002
   

       [po], surely the UK has a limited period of copyright? A book-copier would be a boon to Project Gutenberg & its kin as they make works now in the public domain electronically accessible.
—hello_c, Feb 19 2002
   

       For Gutenberg an OCR solution is what is needed, no?
—bristolz, Feb 19 2002
   

       Copyright laws vary greatly from country to country. Most countries have limited duration of copyright. Many also include provisions for Fair Use exceptions to the usual rules. For example, in the USA it is acceptable under the Fair Use clause to make copies of short sections of the work for academic use, and certain other non-profit personal uses. You can also make a single archival copy of an entire work for which you have already purchased a licensed copy. However, you must destroy the archival copy if the license expires or you transfer the licensed copy to somebody else. You do not need to obtain permission from the copyright holder or pay any fees as long as you stay within the boundaries of Fair Use.   

       Printed media that have survived long enough for the copyright to expire may be too fragile to survive any kind of automated page turner.
—BigBrother, Feb 19 2002
   

       nice idea, and is anyone really bothered about the breaking of copyright law in this regard? - nobody seems to mind it with music. How about a damp thumb stylee device to turn the page.
—notripe, Feb 19 2002
   

       Good idea. I was just doing some photocopying of this type today. I have to drrrrrrrraaaaaaaagggggggg myself to go do some more this evening. I wonder how much of the tedium is actually related to the library "ambience".
—wannalearn, Feb 19 2002
   

       Until you sell it, no one.
—gootyam, Feb 20 2002
   

       We used to have one of these in our office. It was called the "Admin Guy" "Hey Bob, just photocopy this please..."
—AJCrowley, Apr 20 2003
   

       I belive there is a copier made for this purpose. I have seen a picture of it a few years ago. It may have been mfg'd. by Ose' . It did require a bit of manual labor to open pages and turn the book. Many copiers have a "book copy" function that will copy the two open pages on separate sheets of paper. It still requires handeling the book to open the pages. I guess were still not at the "Jetsons" stage yet.
—jafo, Apr 20 2003
   

       As far as I know, that's a standard feature on most copiers.
—snarfyguy, Apr 20 2003
   

       All of my ideas are already on here!   

       This one has actually been baked, but I can't find a decent link ot it.   

       It should be done using a camera positioned above the book and simply flip page by page. Add text recognition, and you have yourself a search-able book.
—knowtion, Mar 11 2009
   

       //Add text recognition, and you have yourself a search-able book.// If you mean combine the best of both worlds, by having a digital image of the original which can be read from, with an OCR overlay for searchability, I think that is an excellent idea. In many cases, too much information is lost if you only have access to the text.   

       I've also come across a baked example, but they were very expensive machines designed for archiving valuable materials, and were not available to the general public.   

       Such a machine could reduce damage to books; people tend to use a lot of force to try to get the spines flat on photocopiers not designed for books.
—spidermother, Mar 13 2009
   

       silly-putty... duh.
—FlyingToaster, Mar 13 2009
   

       The title is wrong. This is a book scanner, which is widely baked in various forms. To be a book photocopier, it needs to be able to print a whole new book with the same contents as the existing one. Fortunately, "print-on-demand" book printers are baked and WKTE as well, so just connect a book scanner and book printer and you have a book photocopier.
—notexactly, Mar 14 2019
   
      
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