Scanning books into digital format has become more of a necessity, rather than just a convenience in our age of digital devices. People want instant access to books for study, research or hobby but also libraries and heritage organizations adore digital format because they protect their originals, especially when they are rare, old or fragile.

All these advantages made mass book digitization a hot issue in the last few years, but also revealed a series of technical and equipment challenges in order to achieve proper results.

Because books do not have a flat surface, book scanners are different than any other document scanner. By nature, the curvature of the pages exposes an uneven focal field to the camera, along with other geometrical irregularities. Therefore, the use of a specialized book scanner that is designed exactly to address these problems is a one-way solution instead of using any other imaging technique. Although it is possible to scan a book on a flatbed scanner by pressing it flat against the glass plate, this can be damaging to the book’s spine and is not really the right way to scan a book.

So, it's obligatory in the field of cultural digitization the use of a book scanner which will scan an open book from above, the same way a human will read it.

Realiscape Typorama uses a combination of robotic scanning, “conventional” book scanning and high resolution photography (for large size books up to A0). Robotic scanning is made by the use of a Kirtas APT 2400 system (factory updated to 2015 specs), and "conventional" book scanning by using two A2-size i2s Copibook scanners. The full production capability exceeds 20,000 pages per 8-hour shift (counted from real-world data from our projects).