Re: Book Scanner Idea

Michelle Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Sat, 25 Jul 1998 11:30:13 -0700

Joe Jenkins wrote:

> This is Just a thought for increasing extropy. If there was a general
> purpose book scanner that was a consumer PC peripheral (<$400)...

joe, this is a concept i have been thinking about for a number of years. around 1990, i spent most of a summer of weekends in a genealogical library searching my roots. (i know get a life. {8^D) i realized that one such as the sutro library in san francisco lists every american on the order of 100 times, this guess arrived at by estimated the number of americans that have ever lived, the number of books, the number of names in each book. calculate, and you find that each of your ancestors are mentioned in that library 100 times, and... you cant find em. perhaps not even any of em. even with advanced research techniques and indices. we need that book scanner. most genealogical books are not copyrighted, and many useful sources are copyright expired. i would cheerfully give 1k clams for such a device. spike