The Internet Archive Demonstrates How They Digitize Books in Their Collection One Page at a Time

In honor of digitizing more than 2 million books, the Internet Archive (previously) employee Eliza Zhang demonstrates the wonderful binding-saving manner in which these books are scanned, one page at a time. Zhang told co-worker Wendy Hanamura that she enjoys this work immensely.

When I asked Eliza what she likes about her job, she replied, “Everything! I find everything interesting. I don’t feel it is boring. Every collection is important to me.”

Chris Freeland, director of Open Libraries at Internet Archive, further explains the process.

At the Internet Archive, this is how we digitize a book. We never destroy a book by cutting off its binding. Instead, we digitize it the hard way–one page at a time. We use the Scribe, a machine our engineers invented, along with the software that it runs.