Scanning Notebooks

Some decisions on scanning notebooks:

• When scanning spiral-bound notebooks:
• Use wire clippers to remove the spiral
• Then scan the pages individually
• Easier than tearing the pages out
• Best not to scan the notebooks with the wire-spiral attached
• It will scratch the scanner surface

Scanning Larger Notebooks

When scanning notebooks, it's helpful to set up the input pages (waiting to be scanned) on the left  and the output pages (fully scanned, front and back if necessary) on the right. Like this:

When feeding a page onto the scanner, you have to flip it so the front side is scanned first:

Then you flip it to scan the back page:

This is, frankly, a little confusing because when the scan is done, you're now looking at the front page, which always seems to throw me. So now the page is completely scanned (front and back) and you can flip it and put it on the output (scanned) pile:

Scanning Smaller Notebooks:

• When scanning small notebooks (if multiple pages can fit on the platen)
• Scan them in "reading" or "book" order
• So that the two pages which would be both be facing out as you flip through the book are on the same page

This last part is trickier than it sounds. It requires careful management of the pages as you scan. Here is the setup that I am using.

First:  The scanner is set up with the two pages (which face each other), face down on the platen.

The input stack (pages still to be scanned) is at the bottom. Notice that the input stack is in order, as the pages are bound in the note-book (first page on top).
 
The output stack (pages already scanned) is at the top. Notice that the output stack is face-down (because they've already been scanned). New pages are placed, face-down, on the output stack once they are completely scanned.

The setup looks like this:

What I do first is to take the right-hand page and flip it over and place it on the output stack:

Then I flip over the remaining page on the platen and move it from left to right:

Then I turn over the page from the input stack and place it on the left-hand side of the platen:

With this scheme, if there's an occasional blank page, it's best just to scan it, so that you don't get confused and start missing pages.

With this sequence, I can generally keep everything straight:

1. The input stack is face up.
• So pages are scanned in order (first to last)
2. The output stack is face down
• So pages are placed face down in order (first to last)
3. Pages are scanned as if you're reading them from a book
4. Every operation is a flip

Scanning Really Small Notebooks

If the notebook is so small that it can contain more than two pages, then:

• If the back pages are all blank
• Scan as many pages as possible (in order) on each scan
• If the back pages need to be scanned
• Then only scan two pages at a time, use the process from above

I may change this if I get a lot of small notebooks. TBD.