Though it’ll take a few tries to get used to moving the scanner over the page, it can satisfactorily manage to digitize type at around 8pt using the OCR. Scanning can be monitored from a 1.5-inch LCD screen this too is where the settings are adjusted. The IRIScan 5 doesn’t even need to be attached to a computer, storing images to a 4GB MiniSD card if preferred.

Now they’re hard to find, but if you want to scan sections of a book without taking them from the library, they could still have a use. There was a time when a handheld scanner, which you move over the page or photo, was reasonably common.

There is also the option of standard one-off 600ppi scans from under the lid, always a handy option to have in the office all this for a relatively modestly priced device. We were also impressed that banners up to 3m (118 inches) could be scanned if required you’ve got to admire fthis lexibility. In practice this technology – which Xerox commonly place atop photocopiers – does prefer perfectly trimmed pages, but if that’s something you can provide the system will churn out images at 25 pages per minute which eclipses even the most powerful book scanners once the page turning is accounted for.

So, if your book will be discarded after scanning, why not un-bind it so the scans can be run more quickly through the scanner? It’s certainly quick Xerox say a user can plough through 1,500 scans a day. This is a full duplex sheet feeding scanner, which, by taking pages from a pile and scanning both sides, might be a more useful tool for some archiving tasks.

Best flatbed scanner for books