Support

Scanning Preferences

Choosing a book to scan

To find out what books other Bookshare.org users are requesting before you scan or submit your next book, visit the Wish List page.

Scanner settings

1. Keep Exact View / Image File

• If your scanner allows you to do so, keep the image file of the scanned pages along with the text translation. If you are using a Kurzweil 1000 version 6 or Kurzweil 3000, the image file is saved with the .kes file format. If you are using OPENBook or WYNN, the image files will be included if you have "Keep Exact View" enabled.

  Why do we ask for this? Over time, as the quality of Optical Character Recognition technology improves, we hope to be able to go back to the original image files that are submitted to provide an even higher quality book.

  However, the size of books scanned with exact view on is quite large, and people with limited disk space or slow connections may find this impractical. We want your book with or without the images!

• If your system does not allow you to keep the image file of the scanned pages along with the text translation, or if the file size makes this impractical, please save the scan in RTF format.

• Bookshare.org can accept digital books in many different formats. If you've got digital books in other formats, you can definitely still submit them to the collection, and we welcome your submissions!

2. Two page scanning

• If you choose to scan two pages of a book at a time, select "two page scanning" so that the resulting file will differentiate between the two pages.

3. Keep blank pages

• Do not discard blank pages if your scanning software has such a setting. Having all of the pages, including the blank ones, will help provide page numbers that correspond to those in the original book.

Scanning

1. Copyright notice

• Make sure to include the scan of the copyright notice. This is found on the back side of the title page. Bookshare.org cannot legally add books to its collection that do not contain the original copyright owner(s) and date.

2. Entire book

• Scan the book cover, book jacket (if it has one), and all of the pages before and after the content.

• Make sure to scan the book in its entirety; no single chapters will be accepted.

• Please include all of the chapters in a single file.

3. Careful layout

• Make sure that the book is square on the scanner when you scan.

Saving the Scan

Following these guidelines will save the most amount of information about the book, such as page numbers, chapters, emphasized text, etc.

1. Optical Character Recognition

• Run Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on your scanned material before submitting it. This will help increase the quality of the submission.

2. File format

• If you are using a commercial OCR package, such as OmniPage or TextBridge, save the scan in the RTF format.

• If you are using OpenBook, WYNN, or the Kurzweil 1000 version 6 or Kurzweil 3000, save the scan in the default format for the program. For example, for OpenBook the default results in a file with the extension .ark. For the Kurzweil products, the default results in a file with the extension .kes.

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