Plustek OpticBook 4600 Book Scanner, Knowledge Office Series

Photocopiers are passé, libraries take to scanners!
Looking for some information? The best place to visit is, of course, the library! It is the books and magazines in the library that have the data. We all have borrowed books from the library at some point in time or the other. Over the years, life has changed and so has the way we store and carry data – in electronic files. However, it is unfortunate that most libraries have not kept pace with the changes. They still have a photocopier machine for general use instead of a scanner. Now, does a photocopier really provide the library goers any convenience or does it make things somewhat easier for the library? Perhaps, it’s neither.

Why it makes sense for the library to replace the photocopier with a scanner?

There are many reasons but the most important ones are:

1.	No paper required - as users can save the scanned file onto the hard drive or any portable storage media. This reduces the overheads of the library significantly, not to forget the good that we do to the environment!
2.	Space optimization – Scanner has a smaller footprint as compared to a photocopier and thus optimizes space. It is ideal for small to medium-sized libraries and school libraries.
3.	Scan and save – besides printing out hard copy, users can choose to scan and save the file to any digital format

Almost every one of us has printed or photocopied some document or other from library. However, can we locate what we had photocopied say about a month ago? Forget about finding documents that are any older. They have been either stacked on some book shelves or thrown away. Chances are that you’ll never find them. If one thinks from a user’s point of view, life would have been much simpler if we could just scan and save the documents that we refer to in the library in a format we are comfortable with (PDF, JPG etc.) onto the computer and then carry them home in a flash drive. You don’t have to carry a stack of papers around and can refer to them as and when you want – even after years – unless of course your computer is stolen or it crashes, which is highly unlikely.