The Princeton Public Library has acquired a BookScan Station from Today’s Business Solutions (TBS), an established and respected library vendor. The station offers patrons the ability to scan books and documents in order to print, e-mail, or save to Google Docs or a USB Thumb Drive. The Princeton Library has USB drives available to borrow or patrons can purchase 4G USBs to own for $7.50.

Photos and images from books can be scanned using the flat bed scanner then scaled, cropped or rotated if needed before sending. The equipment allows control of the resolution, color, size and arrangement of images. For example, a user can scan multiple pictures at a time, then crop, enhance and save each picture individually.

The document feeder allows multiple pages of information (including two-sided documents) to be scanned and converted into TiFF, JPEG, PDF, or Word format. A PDF document cannot be edited, but a Word document can be edited. This is useful when an electronic copy of the document is unavailable, but the information has to be changed. This factor could save the user the trouble of having to retype the entire document.

In addition to the many features and selections, the program is very user-friendly. The program offers touch screen or keyboard and mouse interface, and instructions walk the user through the various options screen by screen. The acquisition of this asset is made possible through a very generous patron donation and delivers many possibilities for offering simplified scanning technology to the community. The normal printing charges of .20 cents per black and white page, $1 per color page still applies, but scanning and other output methods are free of charge.