I’ve purchased a Copy Cat Personal Scanner after lusting after it all Christmas following my post about expensive gifts for academics.
At first I was a bit bewildered by it – the error light came on lots and I kept having to plug it into the computer to figure out if I had scanned anything. After some trial and error I seemed to get it going, and with some minor logic I managed to get full pages 95% of the time.
[One major tip if you have or are getting one of these – flip it to the actual scanning bit rather than the rollers to run to the outside of the page – otherwise you’ll miss about an inch off the end of the page.]
It has a little carry case and could easily fit in my bag with my laptop, notes and a few books. I plan to use it as a home scanner too since I don’t actually have one.
One problem I do foresee is that libraries may not be overly keen on me using it. I see the Bodleian does have guidelines which involve filling out a form, which is a bit of an inconvenience when I can just skip over to the photocopying machine. The flat bed of the photocopying machine damages bindings more than this would, not to mention costing them and me money and killing cute baby trees…
Test scan in black and white and low resolution setting - click to see it a bit bigger..
