RIP-SCAN-TRASH

Wondering what I'm talking about?  Me too ;).

No seriously, I wobbled back and forth for years re books and how best to store them, and here's what I'll say: I'd rather read a physical book for enjoyment's sake any day of the week.  However, if I want a book to be an ongoing reference for me, I got a brand new bag: Rip-Scan-Trash.  Yeah, that's about it (Of course you'll want a Tablet PC to read them on ;).

The problem for me with reference books was, I never referred to them.  9 times out of 10, I'd do a web search instead.  And the books would just glare down at me from their shelf, as if to say "fine, keep your digital mistress, but we're what you SHOULD be using." 

So, feeling far too guilty from the judgemental references, I recently used the Rip-Scan-Trash method to convert a number of reference books to digital.  Somebody qeue the choir: using MSN Desktop search with the PDF search attachment, I CAN ACTUALLY SEARCH MY BOOKS AND USE THEM AS THE REFERENCES THEY ALWAYS WERE INTENDED TO BE.  This is a big deal for me, because as Gordon Bell of the MyLifeBits project has asserted, once you physically file things, you never see them again. 

And I know a lot of people like to go the route where you scan the book without destroying it for resale value: to me that's like .... can't think of anything, just wasteful timewise as ripping out the binding and ADF'ing vs. preservation is warpspeed vs. Fred Flinstone peddling with his feet.  To bolster my argument to this effect, I point you to Jason Dorko's blog post on the same topic: he too concluded it's a waste of time to try and preserve the physical integrity of the book.

Underlying, I suppose.

Comments

[Rich Bouma]

I'm wondering how you get your text from these books OCR'ed, so that the text becomes searchable.

[kyle776677]

Hi Rich,

I use Adobe Acrobat Standard edition. It actually runs the OCR on the documents as I scan them in. As someone who doesn't know too much about OCR technology, it's very simple and straight-ahead.

[Brett]

Kyle,

Nice idea, especially for those older reference books that didn't come with the CD ;-)

Now all I need is a TabletPC (when, oh when, is Apple going to come out with a MacTablet?!?)

[Rich Bouma]

OK, thanks. I hadn't known that Adobe Acrobat included OCR capability. I've tested it out, and it's very good.

Another program that's reasonably priced and very useful for searches is DTSearch.

Great job on the blog. I carefully read everything you post.

[Coach Handbags]

Great articles and it's so helpful. I want to add your blog into my rrs reader but i can't find the rrs address. Would you please send your address to my email? Thanks a lot!

[kyle776677]

Hi Coach,

Click on the link in the upper right of the blog that says 'RSS feed'. You can then view the XML or select a web-based feed reader. Let me know if that helps.