The Woodinville High School Library is a teaching library with the goal of promoting life-long learning for students and staff. The staff includes Dione Garcia and Andy Hegeman, both National Board and Washington State Certified Teacher-Librarians, and the collection includes over 20,000 volumes, with a balance of print and electronic materials from a variety of sources.

The new library is an open, airy building with high ceilings, lots of windows to bring in natural light, and well-designed teaching spaces. It’s also a state-of-the-art facility, with Promethean white boards (interactive computerized boards for multi-media instruction and presentations), 34 Macintosh computers on the library floor, and an adjacent computer lab with another 34 computers. In February 2011, it became the first public school in the nation to install a BookScan Station, the industry’s first affordable, easy-to-use, self-service book scanning solution for libraries.

Why BookScan Station?
“We had a scanner in the library, but it was a hassle to use and it didn’t do what we needed to do,” said Andy Hegeman, Teacher-Librarian and English Teacher at Woodinville High School. “We also have a Ricoh copier with a scanner function, but the scans go to the district folder, and it requires about seven steps to access that folder.” Neither machine was simple enough for students to use.

Then Hegeman took a technology class at the University of Washington and heard someone mention a book-edge scanner, which allows the book page to lie flat on the glass to capture a distortion-free image and protect the spine of a book from damage. “I’d never heard of that before, so I went to do a little research on-line and the BookScan Station came up. I thought it was pretty cool, so I started reading about it.” Quickly, he realized the BookScan Station had more going for it than its patented beveled book edge, and he shared the find with fellow Teacher-Librarian and Library Department Head, Dione Garcia, who teaches English, Social Studies and Library Media.

The BookScan Station allows scans to be saved to several common formats, and includes advanced Optical Character Recognition to create searchable documents. The scans can then be saved to a flash drive, e-mail or GoogleDocs.

“We could immediately see the potential, not just for students, but for teachers,” said Hegeman. “Teachers have file drawers filled with lesson plans and study guides going back years. But we’re trying to move to digital, so what do you do with all that stuff? With the BookScan Station, a teacher can scan those things into Word, then manipulate them to bring them up to date and print them out as needed.”

Still, they carefully researched other options. “This was a large purchase for us, so our vetting was extensive,” said Garcia, who also serves as Staff Technology Resource Teacher and recently completed the Library Media Specialist Program at Central Washington University. “We called many, many libraries, and we compared the BookScan Station to other products. We had some other products recommended to us, but they didn’t scan to e-mail or to GoogleDocs, so they didn’t fill our need.” Scanners that had more capabilities were more expensive – and much more complicated to use. Nothing else had the BookScan Station’s easy-to-navigate touch screen to guide users through the scan process.

“Really the most important aspect of the BookScan Station is the convenience,” said Hegeman. “Before, we’d have a class of 35 kids come in to do a history paper. They’d line up and one of us or a TA had to stand by the copier pushing buttons, making hundreds and hundreds of copies” BookScan Station is so simple that it’s self-service. “They can do it themselves, so it frees us up. Kids just walk over and somehow genetically know how it works. They’re digital natives.”

BookScan Station Improves Student Learning
Unlike the copy machine, located in the faculty room behind the circulation desk, they set the BookScan Station up right on the circulation desk, where everyone could get to it. The goal, said Garcia, was not just to save time and paper, but to actually improve student learning by getting them more involved in their research, encouraging them to use more sources, and preparing them for life in a digital world.

Introducing the new technology was easy, said Hegeman. “We made a short PowerPoint, including a 40-second video, and before the start of a research project, we show that to students. They say, ‘That’s all you have to do?’ Now they are its biggest fans.”

The next step was to teach students to scan responsibly. Teachers and Librarians talk to them about ethical use and attribution. Then they encourage students to start by scanning the verso page on the reverse of the title page to make sure they have the source’s catalog and publication information. That way, they’ll have the information for citation.

By scanning their own material, “they know where their information came from so they can be authoritative and credible about what their sources are,” said Garcia. “Knowing where information comes from and how to use it is more important than ever for today’s students. Now, they are not taking home some paper copy that’s really difficult to read, that can get out of order easily, with print that’s too small. With the scanner, they can have it in the format they enjoy most – digital – and they can manipulate it.”

The result? “Our teachers are finding that more diverse sources and better quality sources are finding their way in to student projects” since the BookScan Station was installed, said Garcia.

Hegeman agreed. “It has really breathed new life into our print sources,” he said. “Kids are more likely to use the books. And they are more likely to quote a source if they can cut and paste it than if they have to retype it. Students used to groan when teachers said they have to have three print sources. Now they don’t complain because instead of going to the photocopier, then can go to the scanner and get a nice Word document or JPEG.”

Unexpected Benefits
“Our primary purpose (in getting the BookScan Station) was to improve student learning, and it’s done that,” said Garcia. But everyone in the Woodinville High School community has found ways to use the scanner. The front office and counseling office have used it to scan and e-mail forms and assessments to parents. Teachers can easily e-mail work sheets and homework assignments to sick kids so they don’t fall behind. The yearbook teacher is taking advantage of BookScan Station’s book edge and 11”x17” scanning bed to start digitally archiving 20 years worth of yearbooks. One art teacher is digitizing a collection of photographs he uses for classes. And art teachers and students alike are using it to scan art projects for digital display or to create a portfolio of their work.

“What I like about the BookScan Station is that it’s one of the most efficient ways to use information,” said Hegeman. “We use things like GoogleDocs or Turnitin.com, but you need to have a digital infrastructure in place in order to move to the 21st century classroom. The BookScan Station forms part of that infrastructure.”

BookScan Station has also helped Woodinville save trees and money.

“One day I had 150 kids waiting for copies,” said Hegeman. “If each kid just copied six pieces of paper, that’s 900 pages – almost two reams in one day.” Now, he said, the copier sees hardly any use. “So the savings in paper and man hours, with the addition of the ease of use and our ability to help them with other things instead of the copier . . . that’s huge.

In addition to savings on paper and toner, the library will likely be getting rid of that copier behind the circulation desk. Since the BookScan Station was installed, said Hegeman, “we’ve hardly used it at all. Most everything we need we can scan. If for some reason we need a copy, we can walk across the hall to the office.” That will save even more money, since the copier is leased.

It’s also saved them a bit of stress. “We are pleased that we haven’t had any issues with it,” said Hegeman. “That’s a pleasant surprise. Often electronics – computers, copiers, scanners – have issues. This has been reliable, day in and day out. It’s a joy to use and we don’t have to worry about it. It just sits there and does its thing.”

“I would recommend (BookScan Station). It saves time, energy and paper, and students will be able to use sources better in their papers for a higher quality learning experience.”
Dione Garcia
Teacher-Librarian & Library Program Department Head
Woodinville High School

The university’s Penrose Library is growing, too, and has just begun a $32 million expansion aimed at transforming it into a ‘library of the future’ that is more energy efficient and more inviting for students, faculty and visitors. This 18-24 month construction project will actually create a entirely new library on the same location – 10,000 square feel larger, with more seating and study space, a large café with patio seating, and enhanced technology in all areas.

On June 20, most library services relocated to a large ballroom and gallery in the Driscoll Student Center. There, the University has created a study space, surrounded by academic support services, including a pick-up desk for books. During the 18-24 month construction project, the collections will be located off campus, and patrons will need to request books and other materials online. Two vans will run in a continuous loop during the hours the library is open with the goal of delivering all requested materials in two to four hours.

Why BookScan Station?
Access Services Librarian Bethany Sewell has wanted to get a BookScan Station for the library since she learned about it at an ALA Conference two years ago. She said three things caught her attention. First was the affordable cost. Second was the BookScan Station’s combination of a flatbed scanner with and easy-to-use touch screen to guide patrons through the scanning process. Finally, she appreciated the fact that the step-by-step instructions on the touch screen include a copyright agreement that patrons must accept before scanning.

However, she ran into difficulties trying to coordinate with other departments in order to connect the BookScan Station with the network. The BookScan Station allows users to scan books and documents into a variety of file formats – including PDF, text-searchable PDF, JPEG and Word – then save their scans to a USB drive. If the scanners are connected to the network, patrons can also send their scans directly to an e-mail address or to a printer.

I tried to get them on the same page in the same room, but it was difficult,” said Sewell. “Solving those issues was a barrier until I convinced the forces that be that we didn’t necessarily need to connect to the network for email or print stations.” Instead, she pushed ahead and ordered a BookScan Station for the library, but it currently only allows users to save their scans to a USB drive.

That limitation has not put a damper on patrons’ enthusiasm. The scanner was installed right next to the circulation desk in late February. “In the first month before we even really had any PR about the scanner, the pages scanned surpassed both copiers in the building put together,” said Sewell. By April, that number had increased four times.

To encourage students to use the new technology, Sewell posted a notice on the library’s home page urging students to ‘try our newest “gadget”, the easy-to-use, free book scanner!” The ‘Featured Gadget’ blurb described the BookScan Station’s benefits: “Touch screen instructions make it easy to quickly scan pages and save them onto your flash drive. The scanner glass goes to the edge of the machine allowing you to get cleaner, brighter scans of book pages than on a traditional flat bed scanner or photocopy machine.”

She also set out a bowl of about 100 flash drives left over as promotions from a previous event. “We just hand them out as needed,” she said. “We had about 100 and are almost out. If they give them back, that’s great – otherwise, we needed to get rid of them anyway.”

What do students think? Sewell shared some of the comments she has received: “Genius!” “When are you going to get more?” “Can you have a sign up sheet because that guy is hogging it.” “My document came out so clear.” And “Thanks!”

Transitioning to the Future
With the library renovation underway and all materials located off campus, Sewell believes the BookScan Station will be a real asset. “We expect a dramatic increase in paging materials as patrons won’t be able to browse books before checking them out, much less browse shelves for books,” she said. “This will help them not have to check out everything they page as they can scan selections as needed and return while still at the temporary service space we have set up.”

And, once construction is complete, the BookScan Station fits in with the University’s vision of a ‘library of the future’ offering more digital material and using fewer resources.

“Folks want digital,” said Sewell. “We are purchasing more materials digitally and that is how they often use even long segments of material.” In addition, the University of Denver has made a strong commitment to environmental conservation, and has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050. “Going green is ubiquitous here, so (the BookScan Station) was a natural selection.”

Sewell does have plans to get more BookScan Stations, and hopes they will eventually be connected to the network so patrons will have the ability to scan to e-mail and to print. “Hopefully now, after the great success and proof of concept, we can collaborate more with the other units,” she said.

She also wants to keep offering the scanning service for free. “Why charge?” she said. “It seemed like a barrier to use. We wanted to promote sustainability. We have other scanners – like the microform scanner which we do not charge for and it’s much more expensive to maintain. Besides . . . we’re here for service not revenue.”

Eventually, she says, she sees scanners replacing photocopy machines as the workhorse of the library. For one thing, patrons today – especially college students – want their material digitally. But the BookScan Station’s easy of use and reliability have also made life easier for library staff.

“I don’t think I’ve answered more than one question about the use and my staff hasn’t complained about needing to step out and help patrons like they so often do with the copier,” she said. “Perhaps we will be able to kill two library pet peeves in one stone – forever fixing jammed staplers and copiers. I even learned in library school that librarians spend more time doing those two things than almost anything else. Its true.”

“BookScan Station is “simple, easy, low maintenance, inexpensive. Patrons will love the added service, and of course – it’s GREEN.”
Bethany Sewell
Access Services Librarian
Penrose Library, University of Denver

The Princeton Univeristy library system has grown from a collection of 474 volumes in one room of historic Nassau Hall to over 11 million holdings in 19 buildings. The main collection is located at Firestone Library. Built in 1948, Firestone boasts over 50 miles of shelves and almost four million volumes. It is one of the largest university libraries in the world and among the largest “open stack” libraries in existence. Committed to staying state-of-the-art, the library provides networked computers across campus and a variety of electronic resources.

Why BookScan Station?
According to Eugene Kaganovich, a systems analyst in the Princeton Library IT department, he found himself “spontaneously, for better or worse” responsible for the management of the library’s scanners. As a result, he said, “I’m always looking for new scanning products.” So when Kaganovich saw the BookScan Station at the ALA Conference in 2009, he was intrigued.

Made by iVina, the BookScan Station pairs a flatbed scanner with a simple touch-screen screen to guide users through the scanning process. Users can choose to scan books and documents into a variety of file formats, including PDF, text-searchable PDF, JPEG and Word. And they can save their scans to a USB drive or e-mail them right from the scanner. In addition, the BookScan Station’s oversized scanning bed has a beveled edge that allows book pages to lie flat on the glass to protect the book spine and capture a distortion-free scan.

“What attracted me was the ease of use,” said Kaganovich. “The patron doesn’t have to do anything but approach, touch, and scan. Plus, sometimes you need to move it or turn it, and (the BookScan Station) is very light weight. So you’ve got nice software, an easy-use screen, and an easy-to-move scanner with a book edge.”

Kaganovich was sure the BookScan Station would be a great addition to the Princeton Library System, but others weren’t so enthusiastic. “To be honest, the library didn’t have any intention to buy any, but I insisted that we get one on trial.”

The trial unit arrived in July 2010, and was installed, not in a highly visible area, but in a nook on the third underground floor of the Firestone Library. Other than the signage over the scanner, the library did nothing to promote the BookScan Station. Still, by the time school started in September there were lines of students waiting to use it and library staff was hearing positive reviews. Then, said Kaganovich “there was a glitch and the unit became unavailable temporarily and people started howling, ‘We need that! We need that!’”

Quickly, the discussion changed from whether to buy the BookScan Station to how many to buy. “The department heads bombarded us with requests,” said Kaganovich. In the end, Princeton ordered 16 BookScan Stations. Six are located in the Firestone Library, with others scattered among other library branches and departments. A few departments are waiting on furniture orders before setting up their scanners, but those that are operational are being used every day.

All of the units are set up in public areas, intended strictly for the use of library patrons.
“For our archives or to digitize materials, we use much more expensive and complex overhead scanners and cameras,” said Kaganovich. The BookScan Station, in contrast, is intended to improve service by giving students a fast, easy – and free – scanning solution.

Ongoing Assessment
Princeton University Library plans to study how the BookScan Stations are used and what impact they have on resources and services. “We have not started collecting any statistics or doing any analysis, because we’re waiting for all the units to be deployed,” said Kaganovich. “But my impression is that, yes, it does save printing costs, just by the fact that BookScan Station is not connected to the printers. That means the work patrons do with it, they take home, so they don’t print. That’s a massive amount of scanned papers that doesn’t end up on our printers.”

So far, he said, the BookScan Stations have done everything he expected. “The touch screen makes it easy,” said Kaganovich. “The actual selection of tools by page is also easy. And the actual software is very quick and responsive, so you don’t have to wait. Then there’s the compactness of the unit and the light weight of the scanner.”

In addition, by wasting less paper, the scanners helps fulfill the goal of ‘Greening Princeton,’ a key consideration in the discussions about getting the scanners.

Already, having a fast and easy scanning solution is changing the way library patrons work. “We have other scanning solutions which are more like sit-down stations where you scan, then you edit and modify,” said Kaganovich. Often, people get caught up in that process and waste a lot of time using the scanner software to improve their scans. That doesn’t happen with the BookScan Stations. “With these, you come, you scan, you leave,” he said. “Patrons are discovering that, by doing just that, it gives them more productivity.”

Princeton’s BookScan Stations have now been in place for almost a full school year, but Kaganovich sees this as just the beginning. Once the study is complete, the library may decide to add features or tweak the distribution of the scanning stations. “Still, I feel comfortable in that they are in rather heavy use and we don’t have any complaints or problems,” he said. “They do what patrons want them to do. In this configuration, they are fulfilling their purpose to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“I am very satisfied. The way (the BookScan Stations) work exactly fits their use and everyone is satisfied. They are easy, fast, and effective instruments to do quick scanning work.”
Eugene Kaganovich,
Infrastructure Operations Lead Analyst/Manager
Princeton University Library Systems Office

The school became co-educational in 1973, and today, this independent boarding school for students in grades 9-12 maintains a top-tier reputation and state-of-the-art facilities. Located in Andover, Massachusetts, about 25 miles north of Boston, the 500-acre campus is home to about 200 boarding and day students from all 50 states and 34 countries. While proud of its rich 230-year history and the generations of leaders it has educated — including both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — Phillips Academy’s true focus in on today’s students, destined to be the leaders of tomorrow. One way that dedication to the future manifests itself is in a with a commitment to environmental sustainability that includes an on-line ‘building dashboard’ to show real-time energy consumption on campus designed to encourage conservation.

The Oliver Wendell Holmes Library — named for poet and 1825 Phillips Academy graduate, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. — houses 140,000 books, 250 print periodicals, and an extensive electronic collection. Students have access to another 3 million items through the North Of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE). A point of pride is the library’s Garver Room, which houses the most comprehensive secondary school reference collection in the country. Located in the heart of campus, the library was built in 1929 and fully renovated in 1987, and offers wireless network access and public computers throughout the building.

Why BookScan Station?
Elisabeth Tully, Director of the Oliver Wendel Holmes Library saw a demonstration of the BookScan Station at the ALA Midwinter Conference, and immediately set about applying for a grant to get one for Phillips Academy. In her grant proposal, Tully wrote that the goal in getting the unit was “to save money, be more environmentally friendly, offer better service, and better support the digitization activities of the Archive and Special Collections Departments.”

The grant was approved, and in December of 2010, Tully removed the photocopy machine next to the circulation desk and replaced it with a BookScan Station. The photocopier, she said, was being heavily used, mostly by students copying materials on academic reserves. While Phillips Acadamy doesn’t charge students for printing, it does charge five cents per page for photocopies to cover the cost of paper and toner, and students felt that was unfair. Because BookScan Station doesn’t use paper or toner, the library was able to offer free scanning. That, said Tully, was a big advantage for students and an encouragement to go paperless.

“There is no marginal cost unless they scan to print, and we don’t charge for printing,” she said. In addition, replacing the coin-operated copy machine with a free scanner means students and library staff no longer need to make change for the copier.

But the BookScan Station isn’t just saving money for students. It’s having an impact on the library’s budget, as well. “The copier budget is managed centrally,” said Tully. “We include in our Departmental budget our best guess as to our eventual allocated share of the Academy’s copier maintenance contract. At this point in the budget year, we might be on target or overspent. We won’t know until June. We are currently budgeting more than $2,000 towards copier maintenance. The annual maintenance cost of the Book Scan machine is a small fraction of that and is guaranteed.”

BookScan Station has certainly helped the library go greener. Even with no charge for scan-to-print, most students are choosing to save scans to flash drive or e-mail, said Tully. BookScan Station allows users to save scans to a variety of file formats, including OCR searchable Word and Excel files that can then be edited on students’ laptops, which is “much more useful output than paper.” As a result, “there is definitely less printing, but it hasn’t been entirely eliminated,” she said.

Best of all, students have been thrilled with the service the scanner provide, and they have told Tully so. One student said he found himself studying in the library instead of his dorm room because the scanner was such a useful resource. Another commented that “the scanning machine is exactly what the library needed. It is very convenient.” A third wrote, “The scanner is the best machine in the library.”

Unexpected Benefits
Like the copy machine it replaced, the BookScan Station is heavily used to scan items on reserve for classes, like math or science problem sets, or book chapters for supplemental reading. These reserve items have a 2-hour check-out limit, and all the students in a particular class need them. Students have discovered that, with the BookScan Station, “one student in a class can scan the relevant readings, and then distribute them within Blackboard (the school’s intranet) to the rest of the class.”

The staff has also found the BookScan Station useful for quickly and easily scanning photos of alumni for use during class reunions.

The Future
Tully had hoped that the BookScan Station would help Oliver Wendell Holmes Library digitize materials in the Archive and Special Collections Departments. That has not been possible, simply because the unit is so popular with students that the staff can’t get time on the machine. To solve that dilemma, Phillips is planning to get a second BookScan Station for the Archive office.

“We can put that right to use,” she said. For one thing, the BookScan Station is quicker and easier to use than the library’s traditional flat bed scanner. In addition, the patented beveled book-edge protects the spine of the book from the damage that occurs from pressing a book flat into a traditional copier, which “is particularly important when handling rare and delicate materials,” she said. “The scans are also superior, in that the bevel allows the scan to go all the way into the spine, eliminating the shadow made by the spine of the book.”

“In my opinion there is no downside to this technology. It is simple and efficient. It saves money and staff time. The students and faculty love it.”
Elisabeth Tully
Director, Andover and Oliver Wendell Holmes Library
Phillips Academy

Today, with more than 90 languages spoken on campus, CCNY is one of the most diverse colleges in the United States. City College provides nearly 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students with opportunities to achieve academically, creatively, and professionally in the liberal arts and sciences and in professional fields such as engineering, education, architecture, and biomedical education.

CCNY has eight libraries: The Morris Raphael Cohen Library, the main library housing the social science and education materials, the reference division, government documents, and the archives and special collections; the Art and Architecture library; the Art Visual Resources Library; the Architecture Visual Resources library; the Music Library; the Science and Engineering Library; the Dominican Institute Library: and the Center for Worker Education Library. Together, they boast a collection of 1.54 million volumes and 138,000 e-books.

Why BookScan Station?
The busy CCNY library system had a constant demand from students wanting to scan materials, but had been unable to find a satisfactory solution. “We had scanning sort of intermittently, but it was constantly breaking down,” said Pam Gillespie, Associate Dean and Chief Librarian of City College of New York Libraries. “Also, we had to put the scanner on a workstation, which was constantly occupied” by students using the computer for other uses.

So, two years ago, Gillespie turned to the library’s photocopier vendor – CCP Solutions of Brooklyn – for help. They introduced her to the iVina BookScan Station, for which they are the exclusive dealer in the Northeast Region.

“One of things that attracted me was the fact that it could be a stand-alone scanning station,” she said. She also liked the fact that BookScan Station could be customized for her busy library, allowing users to quickly scan materials and save them to a flash drive – disabling the e-mail and print options – so the units wouldn’t be monopolized by students the way the old scanner-computer combination was. “The ability to scan to flash drive was a biggie,” said Gillespie. “It’s just so much easier, and allowed us to keep it off our network. Plus we sell the flash drives, so they’re always available to students.”

The library did look at other systems, but the BookScan Station’s easy-to-use touch screen interface – and the library’s existing relationship with CCP Solutions – tipped the scales. “We dismissed the other scanners we looked at because they didn’t do the same thing, and they were more complicated. I’d rather have this unit that just says ‘push here.’ As idiot-proof as you can make it – that’s us. Plus, with state agencies, it’s always a challenge to get a new vendor who nobody knows approved.”

More Scans; Less Waste
CCNY installed two BookScan Stations – one in the Cohen Library and one in the Science and Engineering library – and it wasn’t long before students flocked to use the machines. “We have a blog that serves as main library webpage and we have a Facebook page,” said Gillespie. “We just threw it up that we had a scanner and that’s all it took.”

Two years later, it’s not uncommon to see students lined up to use the BookScan Stations, especially during finals, said John Carrero, CCNY’s Library Systems Manager. And even with such heavy use, he’s heard no complaints. “They are very user friendly,” he said. “Students just scan and go.”

One reason for the BookScan Station’s popularity may be that it is free. “I would never charge for scanning, because it doesn’t use consumables,” said Gillespie.

And the scanner is helping the library use fewer consumables in other areas, as students scan more and use photocopiers and printers less. “Paper is cheap, but your costs are in toner, so anything that can cut down on that, I’m for,” said Gillespie. “Actually, though, the way we’re really seeing savings is in less garbage because of the accidental printing that used to occur. Students would send a print job accidentally, or they would only want one page, but print all 37. Then they’d come and complain that they ‘didn’t mean to’ and want a refund. I don’t think so.”

Now, students are more likely to scan their materials and take them home to work with them before printing. They don’t have to use the photocopiers, and many of them end up printing at home, where they use their own ink and paper, she said.

The Future
The BookScan Station has been such a success that Gillespie has just ordered two more, which will soon be deployed in the Music Library and the Art and Architecture Library.

“They seem to be trouble free and they keep working, and that’s good,” said Gillespie. “The least amount of human intervention on the part of our techs is preferable.”

While the BookScan Station’s patented beveled book edge and oversized scanner bed have other libraries using it to digitize archives, Gillespie says CCNY libraries probably won’t be using it for in-house projects.

“We have our own scanners for that,” she said. “Besides, you’d never be able to get to these stations. The students would beat you to death.” As heavily as the scanners are used now, students simply wouldn’t want it tied up by anyone – even librarians – working on a large project.

“We have recommended (BookScan Station) to other libraries, and people have come to see them before investing in them. We don’t have to tell them anything. They just have to watch what happens. It’s scan and go.”
Pam Gillespie
Associate Dean and Chief Librarian
City College of New York Libraries

The Nash Library strives to provide all the resources, services and facilities to support the curricular and research needs of students and faculty. The collection includes 263,600 books, over 39,000 electronic periodicals and 391 print periodicals. In addition, the library provides computers and printers for student use.

Why BookScan Station?
“Our campus is trying to become more green,” said Kenneth Brundage, Director of The Nash Library. “They have done a lot of things, like encouraging all of us to be as paperless as possible.”

So when Brundage got a flyer about the BookScan Station, his first thought was that it would save paper. He also realized it could save students money by letting them scan for free instead of paying 10 cents per page for photocopies. Intrigued, he watched a web demonstration to find out more.

“It appeared to be just what we were looking for,” said Brundage. “It looked like it would be easy & intuitive to use, and I liked how it had the ability to save in different formats and the cropping feature,” which allows users to select only the portion of the page they want to scan. He also appreciated the fact that the scanner and its simple-touch-screen interface created a stand-alone scanning station. “We have had a normal flat bed scanner attached to one of the computers,” he said. “But it always seemed to take awhile for students to figure out how to use it and the staff would have to help. Or, because it wasn’t a dedicated computer, a student would sit down and start to work on a lengthy Word document, which would tie up the scanner.”

Brundage considered other options, but decided to try the BookScan Station. “Our photocopiers are managed by a third party company, and I did ask them if they had any kind of product or all-in-one that would provide scanning capabilities. They did, and in the long run, it probably would not have cost me anything. They could just swap out one of the copiers. But it didn’t appear to have all the functionality that the BookScan Station has.” Besides, he added, his staff already spends a lot of time showing people how to use the copy machines just to make photocopies. He figured adding a scanning function would increase the need to hold people’s hands.

Ultimately, he said, “I really wasn’t interested in this for revenue,” and students would most likely have been charged to scan on the copiers. “What I wanted was to encourage them to be paperless and to save them money,” said Brundage. “I was pretty sure if we went with the BookScan Station and kept it free to scan, students would choose the greener option.”

In October 2010, Nash installed a BookScan Station in the main lobby, right outside one of the library computer labs. “We just got one BookScan Station, with the idea that we would see how it goes, then determine whether other places on campus may want to deploy them,” said Brundage.

Saving Time, Money and Trees
Despite what Brundage calls “a very soft opening”—and an announcement on the library’s Facebook page and a few signs by the photocopy machines that students can ‘save a tree and save a few cents’ by trying the scanner – BookScan Station quickly saw heavy use.

In the first six months, library patrons have scanned almost 13,000 pages to digital PDF, Word or graphics files. Reviewing the unit’s logs, Brundage said the scans are “slightly more skewed toward USB because of the size limit of 5 MB for e-mail, which some students butt up against, but it’s a pretty even split. They are also using the color functionality quite a bit.”

Overall, the unit is doing exactly what Brundage hoped. It’s saving the staff time; it’s saving students money; and it’s saving trees by reducing paper use on campus.

“I would say it’s pretty much played out exactly the way we hoped,” he said. “One, it is so intuitive that students don’t need our staff to do any kind of training or hand holding at all. We say, ‘there’s a scanner over there’ and they go to town and do what they need to do.” Secondly, “if you look at 10 cents per page for black & white copies – more for color – and factor that by 13,000, you are really saving students an awful lot of money.” And, while some students are taking their scans on USB to the library printers, Brundage is convinced that the BookScan Station is helping the campus go greener.

“Students are getting more judicious about when they need a hard copy,” he said. “The biggest thing is that now they have another option where they didn’t before. Certainly, the cost savings is big for them. But I do think students today want to be more environmentally conscious and if you give them options, they will choose the greener option.”

Unexpected Benefits
In addition to meeting the library’s primary goals, the BookScan Station has other features that have added value. A good example is the patented beveled edge on the scanning bed that protects the spine of the book from damage and eliminates the black ‘gutter’ and distorted image created by trying to press a book flat on a traditional copier or scanner.

The book edge “makes a huge difference for students trying to make copies out of our bound journals, given how tight the binders have to cut the pages,” said Brundage. “None of our copiers have a book edge, so they’ve always had to just smash it down as tight as they can. I haven’t assessed it exhaustively, but I can only think that is going to preserve our materials.”

In addition, the over-sized scanning bed has been popular with students. “All our photocopiers have 8.5” x 11” paper, so they are limited that way if they use the copiers,” he said. “The BookScan Station has a nice large scanner bed, so they can scan material full size, then manipulate it and do whatever they want once they have the image.”

Finally, Brundage believes the BookScan Station may help The Nash Library staff with in-house projects. “We are just in the planning stages of trying to launch a major initiative to digitize materials in our archives and special collections,” he said. “With such an easy and intuitive way to do it, (the BookScan Station) could speed up production, especially if we have student workers.”

The Future
Recently, Brundage learned that the BookScan Station can be configured to also scan to Google Docs, and the library plans to have that feature enabled by the time students return to campus in the fall. Along with the built-in optical character recognition technology that allows scanned documents to be searched and edited, the Google Docs option will make the system even more useful. “More and more students are using Google Docs to save their stuff on the cloud,” he said.

In the longer term, said Brundage, “I do hope that, as more & more students use (the BookScan Station) and more scan stations are deployed over campus, that we really will see even bigger benefits from a green standpoint, and that we will be consuming less paper. I don’t think we’re at a point where we are anywhere near paperless, but it’s one more nudge in that direction.”

“If you want to give your students the option to scan with plenty of functions; something that’s easy to use and ready to use right out of the box, you really can’t go wrong with (The BookScan Station). The best complement I can pay it is that I really have to pay very little attention to it. It’s never had an out of order sign hanging on it, which I can’t say about our copiers or printers. It works exactly as advertised.”
Kenneth Brundage
Direction, The Nash Library
Gannon University

Today the Library is considered the crown jewel of Branford’s downtown. The collection has grown to nearly 85,000 items, including nearly 23,000 books for children. Over 700 community members come in each day to borrow books, do research, use technology resources, and participate in library programs, from job skills workshops to children’s reading programs. In addition, the library has an auditorium and large reading room. Those spaces, as well as the beautiful rotunda, can be reserved for everything from community meetings to wedding receptions, parties and corporate events.

The library strives to stay on top of current trends in order to offer the best service possible to their population – like Nook e-readers that can be checked out, computers for public use, an interactive website, and state-of-the-art multi-function copy machines.

Why BookScan Station?
As a public library, Blackstone strives to meet a wide range of needs, said Barbara Cangiano, Head of Reference Department. “We deal with people who have academic requirements and business and personal needs,” she said. “People who are buying a house have to send papers to their lender. People looking for work want copies of their resume or social security card to send electronically.” The result was a steady stream of people asking if the library had a scanner they could use.

Hearing how much nearby Wallingford Library liked the BookScan Station, Blackstone Library Director Kathy Rieger decided to install one for a 30-day trial. “I know the Director at Wallingford and have a lot of respect for her and their library, so it didn’t take a lot of convincing to try it out,” said Rieger.

Blackstone Library set up a single BookScan Station unit on a table near the reference desk and announced the trial with a note on their website, a sign next to the machine, and a short article in the local newspaper. People immediately started using the BookScan Station, which is free for scans saved to flash drive or to e-mail. The library chose not to enable the scan-to-print feature.

The Results
“The trial started mid-April and the staff was convinced in a matter of days that it was a very handy piece of equipment, especially when patrons were able to simply walk up and use it without needing assistance,” said Rieger. “I’m impressed that it has the ‘searchable PDF’ feature and the ‘PDF to Word’ feature. Also the touch screen is so easy to use.”

The public was as convinced as the staff.

“We got a quick response,” said Cangiano. “They see the sign or we say ‘try our new scanner,’ and people are literally coming in, using it, and walking out satisfied. I’d say 95 percent have used the scanners without asking for assistance. It is virtually self-serve and we’ve never had new technology here that was so self-sufficient.”

That ease of use has been a real time-saver for the library staff. “So much of what we do is labor-intensive,” said Cangiano. “People need help and that’s what we’re here for. But I love that the BookScan Station does not require the kind of hand-holding that the copy machines and printers require. I think it’s the touch screen. It’s so intuitive. It just asks you a couple questions and you push the selection and go.”

Unexpected Benefits
At first, the staff was simply pleased to have an easy, self-service way to allow patrons to scan their materials. But they quickly discovered other benefits that have them even more excited – like the Optical Character Recognition technology that allows materials to be scanned to searchable PDF and Word documents.

“We recently figured that out and just couldn’t believe it,” said Cangiano. “I think that’s really helpful to have for us, in-house. For instance, we have old papers from the history of the town, obituaries from newspapers that are now defunct, and tons and tons of things in scrapbooks that are deteriorating and are of very little use to anyone because they are not indexed. So we are experimenting with the BookScan Station to see how we can use it with our archives to get them scanned and take advantage of the searchable PDF feature to create indexes. It’s an ongoing project that will take a lot of time, but we’re working on figuring out the best way to use that feature.”

Another benefit, said Rieger, “is that the Book Scan also frees up our public computers as many patrons simply want to scan something to send somewhere or to use themselves and we used to have to put them on a computer for that.”

The Future:
Needless to say, the James Blackstone Memorial Library is keeping their BookScan Station. Librarians anticipate that it will get a lot of use in years to come as people discover how easy it is to do so much.

“It’s a really quick way to take care a lot of the details of your life,” said Cangiano. “People with insurance documents that would ordinarily need to be copied and faxed can just scan and e-mail them. So many job applications today are on-line, and a lot of people don’t have an electronic version of their resume. Now, instead of re-typing it into Word, they can scan it to USB, edit it or update their address, and e-mail it. The BookScan Station has filled a lot of gaps in people’s lives, and it does not seem to have any technical problems or malfunctions.”

While she does not see scanners entirely replacing copiers, Cangiano does anticipate that the copiers will see less use. “I think there are still people that want the paper trail and don’t trust electronic documents,” she said. “But all kinds of people could benefit from electronic versions and this way they can have it in both formats. The BookScan Station has certainly allowed people to do a lot by saving to flash drive or e-mail without having to replenish paper or supplies on the copiers.”

One thing that may encourage people to scan rather than print is the fact that scans are free, while the library just raised the cost for copies to 25 cents per page for black and white and 75 cents per page for color. But Cangiano believes it’s the simplicity of the BookScan Station that will make scans more popular than photocopies.

“Copiers have a lot of features and that’s great, but you waste a lot of paper,” she said. “We can waste 14 pieces of paper to get a double-sided copy right. But BookScan Station truly makes a lot of complicated things very easy. It’s sort of like a fax and a copier and a virtual printer, all in one.”

“The staff was convinced in a matter of days that (the BookScan Station) was a very handy piece of equipment, especially when patrons were able to simply walk up and use it without needing assistance. I’m impressed that it has the ‘searchable PDF’ feature and the ‘PDF to Word’ feature. Also the touch screen is so easy to use.”
Kathy Rieger
Library Director, James Blackstone Memorial Library
Branford, Connecticut

The Law Library is home to over 320,000 bound volumes, including both works on legal topics of interest and general interdisciplinary material. It also offers students access to all standard legal research and reference materials, including Federal Statutes and Regulations as well as a Massachusetts Collection containing all basic Massachusetts practice materials, laws and statutes, and court reports. All of the reference librarians possess a J.D., MLS, or both.

Why BookScan Station?
The law library has extensive access to digital materials, but wanted a scanner to allow patrons to convert traditional resources into digital formats.

“We’ve been kind of watching the technology,” said Anne Acton, Director of the Law Library. “The New England Law Library consortium we belong to was looking at an overhead scanner, but it was $20,000 and I just can’t afford something like that.” Then she saw the BookScan Station at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Boston in January 2010.

“When I saw how easy it was to use, and how affordable, I came back and budgeted for it. My IT staff was initially nervous. They though they were going to get a million and one questions and have to deal with formatting issues. They were thinking ‘Oh no! OCR software!’ But we got it last summer and we haven’t had any problems.”

In fact, she said, in a recent focus group survey, asking what students like best about the library, “the BookScan Station was one of the things that came up. So students love it.” Best of all, said Acton, “it’s easy for the public to use. Our printers and photocopiers all have ongoing problems. We have to load paper or change the toner. This – nothing. It’s the one piece of equipment that works.”

Special Considerations
With their legal training, librarians at New England School of Law are particularly aware of copyright issues, and have signs posted near all their copiers reminding patrons to abide by copyright restrictions. BookScan Station’s step-by-step touch screen process includes a copyright agreement that patrons must accept before scanning.

“I like the fact that the agreement is built right into the software,” said Acton. “It puts the onus on the user to comply.”

Unexpected Benefits
Acton’s main goal in purchasing the BookScan Station was to get scanning capability for students. But she’s found the unit is as popular with staff as well.

“We did have some scanning capability for library staff via a multi-functional copier in the administration area,” she said. “But the BookScan Station is so easy to use that my inter-library loan staff uses it more than the equipment we have in the staff area. I didn’t expect that.”

In addition, students have been using the scanners in unexpected ways. Originally, said Acton, she expected them to scan books and reference materials for their own use. But students are also using the BookScan Station to copy their outlines and notes and class materials and e-mail them to the members of their study groups.

“Law students tend to study in groups, so that facility to share has been great for them,” said Acton. Recently, she learned that the BookScan Station can be configured to scan directly to Google Docs, and she plans to have that feature installed. “It’s another avenue of sharing that the students might like.”

“I like (BookScan Station) because what it does, it does well. It hasn’t got a lot of features that confuse people and make them go to the IT desk for help.”
Anne M. Acton
Director of the Law Library & Professor of Law
New England School of Law, Boston

The University of Connecticut Libraries form the largest public research collection in the state, with 3.6 million volumes; 51,000 print and electronic periodicals; 15,000 reference sources; and a growing array of electronic resources. The main library – the Homer Babbidge Library on the Storrs campus – serves both graduate and undergraduate programs. In addition to the main collection, it boasts the largest public map collection in New England; an Art & Design Library and reading room; the Roper Center Public Opinion Archives; comprehensive collections of current and retrospective Federal and Connecticut documents; and extensive video and audio collections.

Each of the University’s five regional campuses also maintains a library dedicated to serving the programs at those sites. On the Greater Hartford Campus is the Harleigh B. Trecker (HBT) Library, which serves over 1,200 graduate students working towards degrees in education, public policy, and social work and more than 1,000 undergraduates. HBT housed about 100,000 volumes and over 2,000 journals in both paper and micro text formats.

Why BookScan Station?
William Uricchio, Director of Harleigh B. Trecker Library on the Greater Hartford Campus, first saw the BookScan Station at a library conference a couple of years ago. “They were doing a demonstration and I came back all enthused about it,” he recalls. “So I put in an equipment request. Storrs loved the idea, but there was a limited budget so (in April 2010) they bought one for themselves, but not for me.” He continued to hear good things about the units, both from librarians on the Storrs campus, and from his wife at Trinity College, which became the first library in Connecticut to install BookScan Station in November 2009. So he kept pushing and, in late March 2011, the Greater Hartford Campus library finally got a BookScan Station, as did the regional campuses at Stamford and Waterbury.

“It’s kind of funny,” says Uricchio. “I was the one that initiated it, but it took two years for me to get one here.” Now that it has arrived, “the students really, really love it. It’s very easy to use – really remarkable.”

What was it about the BookScan Station that caught his attention at the library conference two years ago?

“We’ve had students requesting scanning services here for a long time,” he says. “At home, they have color scanners and so forth and they never understood why the library didn’t have that. But we never put one out because all we had to offer was a (conventional) flatbed hooked up to a computer that could do one page at time, with no capability for flash drive. That was not convenient or useful.”

In contrast, the BookScan Station pairs a flatbed scanner with a simple touch-screen computer interface. Users can save their scans to a USB drive or e-mail it to themselves in a digital format such as PDF, Word, or a graphic file. And built-in optical character recognition (OCR) technology means that the scanned documents can be searched and edited.

“I came back saying, ‘This is exactly the kind of thing students are asking for.’ When you think about it, the price of this unit is very reasonable, because you are not only getting the scanner. You’re getting the touch screen and the fact that the system is so well integrated. It solved so many things for us in one purchase. It’s really amazing.”

A Growing Clientele
The BookScan Station at HBT Library was launched with a blog post on April 4, announcing that ‘Color Scanning Comes to the Library.’ The post included an embedded YouTube video demonstration on using the scanner, which was originally produced by Fairfield Public Library. Since then, says Uricchio, students have flocked to use the scanners and he has received an overwhelmingly positive response.

“The thing we hear the most excitement about is the touch screen,” says Uricchio. “They say it’s the easiest touch screen they’ve ever used. Each step of the way, it’s so clear what’s going to happen next. Overall, it’s how easily they can get the thing in their hands out into the format they want it in, more quickly and easily than anything else.”

In a recent survey, one graduate student wrote: “A few weeks ago I wanted to recommend you’re getting a scanner. And then we got one! I was so excited when I saw it. It’s wonderful. It beats paying for printouts. Now I can just scan articles to my classmates and teachers.” Since then she – and a lot of other students – have been using the BookScan station regularly.

“We’re pretty sure that by the time fall semester comes, which is our busiest semester, we’ll have people lined up to use it,” he says. “So we may get one more, maybe two – at least one with (a document feeder for) multi-page capability.”

Originally, Uricchio expected that most library patrons would be using the scanner as a free alternative to the library photocopies, which charge 10 cents per page for black and white copies and does not offer color copies. But students today are far more sophisticated.

“I’ve seen a lot more interest in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) than I thought. Students these days are much more technically proficient that we are, and they are using the scanners to scan pages from a book so they can load them directly into their word processors for their papers.” For them, it’s a huge improvement over photocopying their source, then typing it into their word processor – especially since “the OCR is really, really good in this unit. It even picks up unusual fonts. This is very high end stuff.”

The Future
The BookScan Station is not connected to printers or photocopiers, but students seem unconcerned. It may be, says Uricchio, that students are ready to embrace this new technology over the old.

“Just before the BookScan Station came, we had a member of Library IT come out to talk about various problems with printing and the photocopiers,” he says. “Then a couple weeks later, he came out to install the BookScan Station and show us how to use it. I said to him, ‘After you’ve show us this, is it fair to say that what we need is not more copiers, but more BookScan Stations?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely.’”

Part of that is driven by the students desire for more digital content and fewer books to drag around. But it’s also a question of library resources.

“Face it, BookScan Stations are less expensive than photocopiers and they have all this added value,” says Uricchio. “Especially if we can get document feeders and more units, I think we could do a lot more with the BookScan Station. They are easy to place around libraries, because they are not as big, and they’re not using paper or toner.”

Besides, he adds, “You can’t buy this kind of service (for our patrons) or the gratitude we’re getting for providing it. That’s a whole extra value.”

“The OCR is really, really good in this unit. It even picks up unusual fonts. This is very high end stuff.”
William Uricchio
Director of Harleigh B. Trecker Library
Greater Hartford Campus
University of Connecticut

Villanova’s Falvey Memorial Library serves as the premier source of learning and research materials for the University community. The collection of approximately one million volumes includes print, electronic and audiovisual resources, as well as specialized materials reflecting the school’s Augustinian heritage and character. The library is open to the public, but is primarily focused on serving the university community. Each year, Falvey welcomes over 463,000 physical visits, and over 495,000 virtual visits to access its collection.

BookScan Station: A side-by-side comparison.
One of Falvey Memorial Library’s stated goals is to embrace technological innovation and resources in order to provide the Villanova community with a full range of the highest quality media services. So when the old flat-bed scanner and PC combination that the library offered for public use started to wear out, they decided to thoroughly research their options.

“We had always tried to provide some type of scan option for students, but we didn’t have a robust option,” said Joe Lucia, University Librarian and director of Falvey Memorial Library. “We basically had consumer-grade equipment instead of something that was designed for a high volume environment. We wanted something that would stand up over time and heavy use, and have better capabilities.”

The library arranged to conduct a one-month side-by-side comparison between the BookScan Station and a new Canadian-made overhead scanning device. The overhead scanner takes images from a book or document held face-up on a platen. The BookScan Station, in contrast, pairs an over-sized flatbed scanner with a simple touch-screen computer interface.

“We wanted to see what the students would prefer, and whether or not we could determine any patterns in terms of ease of use between the overhead versus the flatbed scanner, and whether that made any difference for amount of use,” said Lucia. “The real issue wasn’t the type of device, but the overall usability and quality of scanning.”

The two scanning systems were set up side-by-side in front of the main service desk on the first floor of Falvey Library. It’s a busy location, and also one where librarians could observe patrons using the scanners and get feedback. Those using the systems were asked to fill out a survey form asking about their overall satisfaction; which features were most helpful; which features were least helpful; and, if they used both scanners, which they preferred.

The scanners were not connected to printers, and both were available for patrons to use for free.

Conclusion: BookScan Station tops for ease of use, scan quality, and price.
The results of the comparison were indisputable. “Within a couple of weeks, it became clear the overhead scanner wasn’t working as well as we hoped it would,” said Lucia. “The scanning and the software both had problems. Also, the software was not as intuitive or easy to use. The students were not happy.” In contrast, he said, “The BookScan Station’s flatbed scanner worked.”

Luisa Cywinski, Team Leader of Access Services at Falvey Library, who works at the front desk, agreed. “We got quite a few more questions on the overhead scanner because the instructions were very poor. I think the font size was about an 8.” In contrast, she said, “The BookScan Station’s interface was very popular. It has nice large buttons, clearly labeled, that make it very easy to find the features.”

In addition to being easier to use, students also said the scan quality was better on the BookScan Station. Cywinski’s test overhead scans show distorted images, which makes the text difficult to read, especially near the dark gutter between pages. In one, her fingertips are visible as she holds the book open, and photographs on the page are marred by glare from the scanner light. But the BookScan Station has a patented beveled edge on the scanning bed designed to both protect the spine of the book from damage and eliminate the black ‘gutter’ and distorted image created by trying to press a book flat on a traditional flatbed copier or scanner. No distortion; no fingers; no glare.

In addition, BookScan Station allows patrons to scan in color, black and white, or grayscale to a variety of formats – including PDF, text-searchable PDF, and JPEG – and to adjust the image resolution. The digital files can then be saved to a USB drive or e-mailed. The overhead scanner had only one setting – to save it as a PDF to USB. “There weren’t as many adjustment options on the overhead, so it was scan-and-go,” said Lucia. “But it did not have the full range of options that the BookScan Station offers.”

“Overwhelmingly, users were more satisfied with the flatbed BookScan Station,” said Cywinski, who compiled the results of the survey. “In fact, looking at the piles of responses, I got about four times as many for the flatbed as for the overhead, which means it was used more. The feature they seemed to find most helpful was e-mail, followed by USB. The other scanner had only USB.” And, while Villanova chose not to enable the scan-to-print option on the BookScan Station, “at least we know it’s there,” said Cywinski.

Not only did students and staff prefer BookScan Station hands down – it also cost less than the overhead scanner. “In the end, it was a combination of price and performance,” said Lucia. “Competitively speaking, it was priced affordably, but it did what we wanted it to do. So we got all the benefits of (BookScan Station’s) flatbed device, and it was less costly in terms of hardware.”

The Future
At the end of the one-month trial, Villanova installed the BookScan Station permanently and is considering purchasing more and possibly enabling the option to scan to Google Docs. Already, the system has become a go-to fixture for students, who are using it for everything from capturing reference and research materials to scanning one another’s notes. “Basically, it takes the place of a photo copy,” said Lucia. “They’ll just grab an item they need a copy of and take a scan of it.”

It’s too early to tell what impact all those scans are having on the 1.4 million pages in printed and photocopied documents the library generates each year, but Lucia says it’s something the University will be tracking. “We have a variety of environmental policies and campus-wide initiatives to be more focused on resource use and environmental impact,” he said. BookScan Station’s motto of ‘Paper Free, Save a Tree’ fits right in with that commitment.

Villanova is not alone in choosing BookScan Station. In the last year, over 100 public and university libraries around the country have made the BookScan Station the industry standard for its easy-to-use, yet powerful features not available from book scanners selling for more than twice its price. Other Pennsylvania locations already using the BookScan Station include:
• Bucknell University
• Duquesne University
• Lehigh University
• Gannon University
• Shippensburg University
• Delaware Valley Community College

“Within a couple of weeks, it became clear the overhead scanner wasn’t working as well as we hoped it would. The scanning and the software both had problems. Also, the software was not as intuitive or easy to use. The students were not happy. In contrast, The BookScan Station’s flatbed scanner worked.”
Joe Lucia
University Librarian and Director
Falvey Memorial Library

“Overwhelmingly, users were more satisfied with the flatbed BookScan Station”
Luisa Cywinski
Team Leader of Access Services
Falvey Library