Cutting books

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Permalink Reply by 5AND5TORM on September 21, 2010 at 11:07am

That is a nice chopper, probably not cheap.
You should check w/ FedEx/Kinkos, I know that they can cut the spine off of books a spiral bind. If they can not do it any print shop should be able to do it.

"I hate dead trees, I would like to digitize everything and make the book "searchable", be able to print out the pages I need on the trail and so on."
Q. If you print your scan are you not killing more trees?

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Permalink Reply by potatomutato on September 21, 2010 at 11:15am

x2

why not just spiral bind the book and take it with you? what are you going to do with the book after the spine is cut off?...discard it? isn't that a waste?

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Permalink Reply by manoweb on September 21, 2010 at 11:31am

I will answer both of you.

I do not like to bring a 600+pages, 2 pounds, 60 dollars book on the trail, with dirt, sand, mud. It is very likely it will get damaged.
When I go on a trail I only copy the pages I need, so the amount of dead trees I use is minimal, and I can take notes, write things, without having to worry too much.

But *the most important* is having the book searchable, or that I can read it on my e-reader or my computer, so I can organize trips if I am at work, at home, on a plane or at a friend's house. I think the value of this is IMMENSE.

Once the book is scanned, it can be put together again with glue (like they do it the first time they bind it). I've seen people doing that and yes, it is not really "as new", but probably less damaged if you bring it on the trail few times.

So, I already had this discussion with several people and I just think I'd rather invest some money in a paper cutter than in a book shelf!


This said, such paper cutter is about 100-150 dollars on ebay. I will check "kinko fedex" and see how much they charge for the service. If it's only few bucks I can avoid buying the big cutter.

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Permalink Reply by manoweb on September 21, 2010 at 4:45pm

Actually you gave me a good idea, that I did not see at the beginning. I could ask them to cut the book, I scan it, and then I go back and spiral-bind it (or similar).

I will drive later to a KINKO place and see if they can proceed.

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Permalink Reply by potatomutato on September 21, 2010 at 6:42pm

i know which book you are talking about and i'm not sure how well it will hold up if spiral bound due to the paper stock and total weight. that book just isn't trail friendly and is the reason why they produced regionalized versions of it in two smaller, lighter volumes.

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Permalink Reply by manoweb on September 21, 2010 at 10:16pm

So... the "KINKO" suggestion worked well! The lady cut my book for free! Nice and sharp cut.

I am now scanning the "High Sierra" chapter for test. So far the scanner is working very well, I need to test more but it seems also the OCR that makes the document searchable is good.

If everything goes well I plan to scan most of the books I have. And of course if anybody wants to do the same I can help.

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