New GOOGLE book scanner could revolutionize access to historic research materials.

New GOOGLE designed book scanner makes scanning far easier - and quicker - according to the New York Daily News book blog - Page Views,

Google Books engineer creates the world's only cool book scanner

BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Want to see a really cool scanner? Wait, come back! This thing really is awesome. Created by Dany Qumsiyeh, an engineer at Google Books, this book scanning machine can scan a 1000 page novel in 90 minutes. If you don't find that impressive, then clearly you haven't spent enough time hunched over the faulty machine at the office, praying for swift deliverance. Whether admiring its practicality or ogling the ingenious design of the thing, it's well worth checking out in the video below

One great use for this device is to scan non-fiction books that are not indexed - or which have minimal or inaccurate indexes.  With the hundreds of diaries and privately printed non-indexed books on subjects I have been researching - which are mostly in difficult to access research libraries, this could allow that information
to be available on-line.