Tech Tip Tuesday: Scan Your Books!

This is a more personal Tech Tip Tuesday than normal, but it’s one that I wanted to share with you, because it’s my big tech-related simplification project right now.

I like to read. A lot. But in light of trying to lead a more simplifide life, I recently went through my bookshelves and ruthlessly purged. I tried very hard to look at the books and be realistic as to whether I would ever get around to reading them. It was a painful process, because as much as I love simplification and minimalism, I still hate to get rid of books. So I decided to scan them.

Four reasons I decided to scan my books

I want to declutter.

I love the freedom of owning a minimal amount of stuff. It allows me to focus my time and energy on things that really matter to me, instead of taking care of my stuff. There is such a sense of satisfaction in knowing that I could pick up and go anywhere I want to in the world in about a day.

I have been following the growth of Dave Bruno’s 100 Things Challenge for some time, and while I know most people are writing off all their books as one thing, it feels like cheating to me. I want to get to the point where my 100 Things include my books.

The content is king.

I know there are some purists out there who think that physical books are the only way to go. If that’s most simple for you, then more power to you, my friend! But for me, the content in the book is what I care about most. I want to be very pragmatic about it all, which means I’m going to store information in the most effective, convenient way possible for my lifestyle. For me, that means digital.

Most books I want to keep for reference, not for regular re-reading.

Once I’ve read a book, it has to be really spectacular before I’ll sit down and read it straight through a second time. More often than not, it becomes a reference book; I’ll pick it up and read a certain section that I know is helpful / applicable for what I’m dealing with at the moment. How much more useful will it be when my whole library is in my hands and searchable, so that I can reference any book at any time?

I’m getting an iPad.

Photo by Flickr user Rego- twitter.com/w3bdesign

Unfortunately not when they come out on Saturday, but eventually (probably sometime during the summer/early fall). The reasoning behind this is forthcoming in a future post, but needless to say reading is a BIG factor. The power of having my entire library (plus thousands of other titles via iBookstore and Google Books) on me at all times will be incredible. It will allow me to read everything – books, magazines, blogs, all on one book-sized device.

Now, I know not everyone is going to want an iPad. If being easy to read for long periods of time and crazy long battery life are your thing, there are a ton of great eBook readers on the market right now, like the Amazon Kindle or the Sony eReader. Or you could just read them on your main computer. The point is that there are lots of great ways to store and read digital books, and the market is only going to get better and more competitive in the future.

The Tip(s)

So that’s my reasoning, and the tip for this Tuesday is twofold: First, consider whether scanning your books might be a viable option for you. Try to detach emotionally from the nostalgia of physical books, and see if eBooks might not make more sense for you in the long term. I would especially encourage those of you who have a book or two that you seem to refer to all the time to consider it – wouldn’t it be handy to have a searchable digital copy available instantly anytime you need it?

Second, just realize that scanning a book is no longer prohibitively expensive or extremely time consuming, either. If you have some motivation, a little time, a digital camera, tripod, cardboard box, and a piece of glass, you can easily create high quality, high speed scans of your books. My setup took about 30 minutes of initial setup time, and it’s averaging about 35-40 minutes scan time per 250 page book.

So if you are interested in transforming your content from physical to digital, here’s the link to the cheap book scanner I made. If you want to invest a little more time and money for a scanner that is much higher quality and much faster, check out the original book scanner tutorial here. And for a great community of people who are really pushing the envelope on this idea, check out diybookscanner.org.

So, what do you think about eBooks? Wave of the future or temporary fad?  Is this a good idea, or am I off my rocker? Let us know what you think in the comments!