[Noisebridge-discuss] DIY Book Scanner

newmy51 at gmail.com newmy51 at gmail.com
Sat Mar 17 23:44:59 UTC 2012


[Originally sent to board at lists.noisebridge.net, beacuse I didn't know any
better.  Thanks to Andy and Ani for the correction]

* * *

Hello Noisebridge,

I write you from Bolivia, doing super cool mushroom studies.  Just before I
left, I attended a meeting where (at the very end when barely anyone was
listening) I brought up my desire to build a book scanner at the space.
 I've since noticed that the folks over at diybookscanner.org have pledged
to "put a book scanner in every hacker space."  Whether that means they
intend to help in any way/facilitate the process or it's just a rhetorical
platitude, I'm not sure, but suffice it to say, Noisebridge is a hacker
space, and book scanners are wonderful no matter where they live.

Being only a mere visitor to Noisebridge -- first only during trips to SFO,
now more frequently as a SFO resident -- I'm very unfamiliar with the
protocol for proposing and beginning a project of these proportions.  Is
there a submission/approval process, or do I just up and make the thing
with whoever's into the idea?  Has someone already hopped on this book
scanning bandwagon?  Has diybookscanner already contacted some Noisebridge
people?

I get back on April 17th.  I'd like to get started as soon as possible, as
a large part of the drive to build a book scanner is to beef up the
Mycological Society of San Francisco library with a digital mirror of its
printed holdings (they also want a bunch of old
newsletters/flyers/correspondence digitized).  Negotiations with Internet
Archive have been strained and paperwork heavy, problems which could quite
handily be solved by having a public access scanner running open source
image handling and OCR software.  I should mention I'm vying for the
position of society librarian (in addition to aspirations for creating a
much larger digital mycological library).

However a scheme like this ought to proceed, I will certainly need plenty
of help, at both the hardware and software level, so feel free to forward
this on to anyone you think might be interested.

All the best from Bolivia.  Hope to hear back soon.

Excellently Yours,

-Danny Newman
cell: 5056709090 (can't receive calls until April 17th).
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