http://bkrpr.org/ 2010-09-08T23:29:46-04:00 http://bkrpr.org/ http://bkrpr.org/lib/images/favicon.ico text/html 2010-08-16T10:51:08-04:00 James Vasile http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=start&rev=1281970268&do=diff This is the home page and the documentation wiki of the BookLiberator project. We also have a blog that contains all the latest BookLiberator news, including information on when kits will be ready for sale. BookLiberator is a set of free software and hardware to digitize books: it lets you photograph all the pages in a book without harming the book. The resulting images can be processed with free, open source software to make user-friendly files in a variety of formats. text/html 2010-07-22T10:32:24-04:00 James Vasile http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=pressclippings&rev=1279809144&do=diff * Forbes, 19 July 2010 * Good Magazine, 28 January 2010 text/html 2010-07-20T11:33:27-04:00 James Vasile http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=kit&rev=1279640007&do=diff NOTE: this page is not visible to users yet. The prices are just placeholders. The Book Liberator Kit We are distributing the Book Liberator as a kit that can be assembled in about 30 minutes. The Full Kit is available for $350 and includes all of the following: text/html 2010-07-19T16:49:50-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=ian&rev=1279572590&do=diff Ian Sullivan I'm handling most of the hardware work and am always happy to talk about BookLiberator designs or building issues. Most days I'm on the freenode IRC network in the #bkrpr channel. Feel free to stop by or sent me mail at bkrpr@ this domain. text/html 2010-07-19T16:49:22-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=soc2009&rev=1279572562&do=diff Google Summer of Code, 2009 Background BookLiberator is a suite of free software (and open hardware recipes) that helps students and scholars digitize books and collections of documents. The tools enable individuals to scan and process (rotate, crop, ocr, etc) primary textual sources. text/html 2010-07-19T16:48:54-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=hardwareideas&rev=1279572534&do=diff Plexiglass * We're currently testing whether non-glare coating on the plexi helps simplify lighting by reducing or eliminating points of bright glare in page photos. Stand * Paint the inside of the book cradle a flat, dark color, such as matte black. This makes it a lot easier to have software crop off the non-book parts of the image. I used black because that's what unpaper looks for. text/html 2010-07-19T16:48:33-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=cameramodels&rev=1279572513&do=diff To test the resolution of your camera, here is a test chart that you can print. Cannon Powershoot A590 The Cannon Powershoot A590 offers a good mix of features and low price that we know of. If you are interested in purchasing a cheep and very functional camera for bookliberating, these recently retailed for ~$99. text/html 2010-07-19T16:48:02-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=results&rev=1279572482&do=diff In order to make this site easier to load, and cheaper to host, most of our page images are located in our flickr collection. Here are two sample pages (heavily compressed to fit on the page) taken using the non-destructive BookLiberator design and cropped by our software. Next to each page is the text of that page as OCRd by tesseract (slightly squashed by our page layout: text/html 2010-07-19T16:47:14-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=download&rev=1279572434&do=diff BookLiberator is written in Python and requires that you have a working Python environment. In addition, it has some dependencies: numpy, tesseract, psyco and pygtk. You'll need to install both of these for BookLiberator to work. Releases Version 0.1.82 is available for download. text/html 2010-07-19T16:46:52-04:00 Karl Fogel http://bkrpr.org/doku.php?id=usingpowershota590&rev=1279572412&do=diff Using the Canon PowerShot A590 IS Some notes on camera settings and usage. All settings assume you've set the camera to Manual (M on the mode dial on top of the camera). See especially section on focus. The 8 megapixel Canon PowerShot A590 IS was announced in early 2008 (dpreview.com original presentation, fall 2008 updated review) at $199. In April 2009 the price has fallen below $100.