I really wanted to go to the D is for Digitize conference in New York. I couldn't go, but Harry Lewis did, and according to him, the star was Daniel Reetz of DIYBookScanner.org:
While everyone else at the conference was ruminating about whether Google had a library monopoly or whether Amazon or Microsoft might imaginably be able to compete, along comes this dude with his Rube Goldberg contraption and says, hey, let's all just start doing it, and we'll catch up eventually. (source)
Reetz made the book scanner above from "trash and cheap cameras." Very impressive. But what does it mean for books? Heck if I know - apparently Google wants to be Europe's Amazon now, while Amazon is afraid of Apple, and I'm not even sure what a book *is* anymore. Sigh.
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I wonder: Does that scary contraption obey the Three Laws of Robotics?
Yea, I've got all those parts laying around the house....
But seriously, I do have a small but useful collection of books that are not scanned and not copyrighted and I've often thought it would be fun to put them on line. A few maps as well.