In the last post but one, I described how it was pleasing to have full size poster replicas (40×30 inches) of the shelves of books I have scanned, in easy to see positions on the wall in front of my desk. Since then I have begun to wonder just how small these poster replicas could be to provide the same experience. Therefore, as a final phase in this journey, I’ve had the poster set reprinted in three smaller sizes (30x 20 in, 18 x 12 in, 15×10 in) and positioned them in the remaining wall space in my study as shown in the pictures below. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll mull over how the different sizes compare and try to come up with a view as to whether a miniature representation can provide a similar experience to that provided by a full size representation.

The original aim of this investigation was to display virtual images of books on a wall and to be able to call up the full text of any one of them to read. The two ends of this objective – display of a virtual bookshelf, and the ability to read the full text of any of the books – have been achieved. However, the integration of the two ends is, as yet, a manual process requiring the user to choose a title from the virtual display, to open up the iPad SideBooks application, and to find and open the required title.

I’ve briefly thought about a variety of ways that this process might be automated. The original notion was to use e-Paper and to be able to touch the image of a book spine to bring up the full text on a separate screen. In the absence of e-Paper, I toyed with the notion of using Image recognition via an iPhone App, but I couldn’t find an App that would use the text recognised to open up another application. I then started thinking about voice recognition and tried out the Apple Siri voice recognition facility on the iPad. Frustratingly, although it will very effectively open up the Sidebooks application just by the user saying “SideBooks”, Siri is not yet able to search for and open up files within applications. This was confirmed to me by an Apple Chat  support person – though he did advise me that I should inform Apple of my requirement via a Feedback form, which I duly did.

That’s as far as I’ve got. Voice recognition does seem to be the most promising approach – and I guess it’s quite possible that Apple may enhance Siri to call up files, sometime in the future. In the meantime, I expect I’ll be able to just about get by in manual mode!

Before scanning all the books I took photos of them on their bookshelves and had full size posters made of the images. The poster print of the shelf of Paperback  books had two images of about 88 cm (37 inches) in length and roughly 24 cm (10 inches) in height (slightly more than the largest book). After completing the scan of the Paperbacks back in July, I cut out the two poster images, fixed them on some stiff cardboard using miniature bulldog clips and found a couple of spaces on the study wall facing my desk as shown in the image below.

Having had several weeks to ponder them, I‘ve found it pleasing to have them there. I have much better visibility of these books than I had previously as I now look at them every time I sit down at my desk; and it took relatively little effort to achieve and has not taken up any valuable space other than areas of previously blank wall. Of course an electronic and customisable display of the virtual books would have been preferable – but this low-tech version serves much the same purpose.

After completing the scans of the Work and University books last Sunday, I duly cut out the poster prints of those two sets of books. The University books poster is relatively small – some 39 x 32 cm (15.5 x 12.5 inches) and was relatively easy to fit onto the now increasingly crowded wall facing my desk – see below bottom left.

However, the Work books poster, at 114 x 31 cm (47.5 x 12 inches), was far more difficult to place. I was even considering putting it on the wall behind my desk under the bookshelves – or even on the empty bookshelf where the books originally sat – until I had a lightbulb moment and realised the poster didn’t have to be horizontal. Since the titles are normally printed down the spine, they will appear horizontal – and be easier to read – when the poster is turned vertically! Obvious really – but I just hadn’t seen it up to that point. Anyway that made finding a space a whole lot easier and I finally selected a very visible spot between the window and the existing bookshelf as shown below.

So now I still have my books around me, and I can access their contents very easily on the iPad; and I also have two empty bookshelves which I can use for other things – a welcome benefit since I have very little spare storage space left in my study.

After a wonderful family wedding in Italy, I restarted the scanning work on the 19^th of August. With everything I’d learned doing the paperbacks, I was able to work much faster and I completed all 75 hardbacks (some 21,000 pages) in just 10 days.

Of course there were differences: hardbacks are constructed differently – typically with a strip of gauze being glued onto both the spine and the thick cardboard covers. This has to be cut to remove the pages of the book from the hardback covers. Unlike the paperback covers which were mostly small enough to scan both front, spine and back all at once, most of the hardback covers were bigger and the fronts and backs had to be scanned separately. Some of the hardbacks also had dust jackets which also required their fronts and backs scanning separately. To acquire full images of the full front, spine and back of both the covers and the dust jackets, I took photos of each and trimmed them down using the cropping tool in the PDF PRO software that I’m using (I included these images for completeness in case I want to do further electronic manipulations or displays in the future)

For every book, two PDF files were produced: one for the complete book with dust jacket front cover, inside dust jacket front, hard cover front, inside hard cover front, book pages, inside hard cover back, hard cover back, inside dust jacket back, dust jacket back (or similar for paperbacks but without the dust jackets). The other file was for the cover components and included all the items included in the first file but without the book pages and with full images of the complete cover and dust jacket. The cover and dust jacket images were cropped and finalised in the second file before being pulled into the first file to complete the working PDF file of the whole book which was downloaded into Sidebooks on the iPad via Dropbox. The master versions of the two PDF files for each book are stored in a separate folder on my laptop with an offline backup in the cloud.

The hardbacks were books I acquired for University and for Work – i.e. they were for study and reference. Having got them all into electronic form and onto the iPad, I really cannot see why anyone would bother with a hardcopy version of such textbooks. The iPad version is lighter, smaller, more portable, quicker to access, easier to search and far easier to store. I shall make a point to ask my friends in academia and publishing if there is a noticeable trend away from hardcopy textbooks.

Now that the digitisation work has been completed I shall spend a day or two thinking about what further work to do on this particular Journey.

Today I finished digitising the set of 111 paperbacks. It’s been a slow seven week haul but I speeded up as I got more practice and was eventually doing about eight books a day. I started out with the paperbacks as a trial for the main hardback sets; but having done them I realise that they do mean a lot to me, and that they represent a valid investigation in their own right. This is what I think I’ve learned so far:
1. Looking at each of the paperbacks reminded me of how interesting some of them were and has renewed my interest in them.
2. Having the books on my iPad gives me immediate and easy access to them, and makes it perfectly feasible to just dip in and out of them at will – something I have already been doing.
3. It’s good to have the book covers visible on the iPad – on the bookshelves only the spines were visible.
4. I’m luxuriating in the knowledge that I’ll be able to have access to these books always wherever I am – whether it’s in a new house, on holiday, in the house of my children, or in a care home or hospital.
5. Having freed up one whole bookshelf I realise that it opens up the possibility of putting other things on it- both things I don’t have enough room for elsewhere or things which have been stored and which I’d like to make visible.
6. On the down side, I’ve had to destroy the books to digitise them, so I won’t be able to handle the physical items any more. For the most part that’s not a problem, but for one or two, (such as the copy of the Travels of Marco Polo which I covered with takiback some 50 years ago) it’s a shame.