I’ve written before about Karl Voit (1, 2, 3) and his quest to record and digitize every aspect of his life. His Memacs system, which collects data from his email, phone, social media and other sources, is an excellent example of that quest. His latest post is about the lessons he learned digitizing all his papers and books.
Voit is an Open Source advocate so he turned first to open solutions for his scanning and OCS needs. Unfortunately, none of the tools were up to his specifications. After looking at—and even trying—different hardware, he settled on the Fujitsu ScanSnap S15001. I have the same scanner and agree with Voit that it’s a clear winner. When I used a flatbed scanner, the process was so inconvenient that I let my scanning pile up and would have to spend an hour or more scanning the accumulated documents. The ScanSnap is small enough to keep on my desk, is always ready, and takes no time at all to scan and run OCR on a document.
So far, Voit has scanned over 40,000 pages. That includes books, from which he removed the spines. When he was done, he threw away all the paper and books. Now everything is digitized and instantly searchable—a clear win, especially for someone like Voit who is dedicated to having the events in his life instantly retrievable.
If you’ve thought about getting that pile of old papers under control, take a look at Voit’s post. It may provide the inspiration you need to get started. As for me, all new paper coming into the house is scanned and shredded. I’m still working on the backlog and will probably never take my books apart to scan.
UPDATE: splines → spines