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Turn your heavy paper books

into digital and user friendly documents!

smiling young girl holding an open book

Book scanning allows you to obtain a digital copy of any bound book.

You can conduct computerized searches to find specific portions within the text and have multiple users access to the book from any device.

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Go digital for a reason

Peace of mind

Safeguard precious manuscripts from disaster

Availability

Access your books at any time from anywhere

Searchability

Find necessary information with keywords

Research

Use references in your work by simple copy-pasting

Like the idea of weightless, searchable copies of your books?

Get them digitized!

old books standing

We scan all kinds of books, including:

  • Notebooks

    Digitizing personal and professional notebooks through book scanning services transforms handwritten notes, ideas, and sketches into searchable, shareable digital files. This not only preserves the original content but also enhances accessibility and organization, enabling easy retrieval of valuable information for individuals and businesses alike.

  • Company material booklets

    Scanning company material booklets, including training manuals, product catalogs, and policy guides, consolidates corporate knowledge into a digital format. This facilitates easier distribution, updates, and access across the organization, supporting efficient information sharing and learning within the workplace.

  • Valuable and rare books

    Digitizing valuable and rare books protects these irreplaceable treasures from physical degradation while making their content accessible to a wider audience. Book scanning services carefully handle such works, ensuring that historical, literary, and cultural artifacts are preserved for future generations without compromising their integrity.

  • High school yearbooks

    Scanning high school yearbooks captures memories and milestones in a digital format, allowing alumni to revisit and share their experiences with classmates and family. This process preserves the original yearbooks' condition while ensuring the content is easily accessible and can be distributed without physical limitations.

  • Educational textbooks

    Digitizing educational textbooks makes learning resources more accessible and interactive. Book scanning services enable the conversion of textbooks into digital formats that can be integrated with e-learning platforms, facilitating remote education and supporting diverse learning styles with searchable texts and multimedia enhancements.

  • Original book manuscripts

    Scanning original book manuscripts preserves the author's preliminary works, notes, and revisions, providing insight into the creative process. Digital preservation of manuscripts ensures that these foundational documents are safeguarded against loss or damage, offering valuable resources for literary research and historical study.

  • Lab notebooks

    Digitizing lab notebooks transforms experimental records and scientific observations into easily accessible digital files. This not only safeguards the original data but also enhances collaboration among researchers by enabling easy sharing and analysis of laboratory findings, supporting the advancement of scientific research and innovation.

Find the sentence you’re looking for instantly by converting your book into digital format

book with bookmarks

Optimize your time when finding key portions of text by typing in keywords and phrases. With paper-bound books it is nearly impossible to find a particular sentence without reading through the entire book.

ScanHouse America book scanning services can make it possible to do digital keyword searches that are incredibly fast and effective. Either within a single book or within your entire library.

Preserve rare or ancient manuscripts

open antique book

ScanHouse America has a way to carefully scan delicate pages of aging historical books so they can be preserved throughout time. In a way, you could put a stop to the continuous deterioration of records. Old books or newspapers are usually stored beneath glass in order to preserve their quality, but this limits the amount of people who can view them. Once these historical gems have been scanned into the digital format you no longer have to go to the museums in order to see them. The files can be uploaded to educational websites or document sharing programs for unlimited access by researchers, students, and the public.

With our book digitizing service, you can create durable paper copies that can be displayed instead of using originals, which may need to be preserved for research by future generations. With advancements in scanning technology today, disturbing original pages by handling them is no longer necessary.

Choose the book scanning option that meets your needs:

Non-destructive book scanning

Non-destructive bound book scanning provides accurate digitization of your valued books without damaging the original.

We use a special book scanning technology that allows us to scan entire books while keeping them intact. This delicate process is remarkably fast and accurate. The book scanner creates crisp, clear images of the pages and corrects the most of curved page distortion caused by the book’s binding. Text restoration can be performed for faded or hard-to-read sections of the text and we can erase signs of dirt or smudges that may be visible on the original pages.

Non-destructive book scanning is a more detailed process and does cost more than destructive book scanning. However, the best part about this type of book scanning is that your books will be returned to you in the same condition as when we first received them.

Destructive book scanning

Destructive book scanning is a cheaper option that allows you to trade in a book's integrity in return for the complete content as a superior digital copy.

This type of book scanning is typically done for books that need to be converted into digital format when the owner does not require the original book back, or is happy with the loose pages which can later be re-bound.

This is a more cost effective book scanning option that still results in the same high quality scanned images.

With this method, our professional technicians disassembles the book binding so that the flat pages can be fed through a sheetfed scanner.

The finished product consists of a digitized book with superior image quality.

The Process

  1. You give us the book(s) you need scanned. Even if you don’t live nearby, you can still ship your books to make use of our book scanning services.
  2. You specify the type of scanning you require (destructive or non-destructive). Our book scanners can scan in colour or black and white and can accommodate book sizes up to 10 by 15 inches.
  3. We scan your books for you and send you the electronic copy.
  4. If requested, and once you've confirmed the quality of your scanned books, we can also discard or destroy your originals.

FAQs: Book scanning

Where can I scan a book?

Our secure book scanning facility is located near Seattle, Washington. We have a Free pickup or delivery of originals from/to your location within the Greater Seattle Area.

However, we can scan document projects for clients from in and around Washington State and surrounding areas in the United States.

We can also send you any document you require in electronic form if you need it before the scanning project is through.

Seattle Scanning Service by ScanHouse America offers comprehensive document scanning services in and near Seattle, Washington, as well as throughout Washington State and the surrounding regions in the United States.

Where can I scan a book to PDF?

Our book scanning services are located in Seattle, Washington.

We also can scan document projects for clients from in and around Washington State and surrounding areas in the United States.

Seattle Scanning Service by ScanHouse America offers comprehensive document scanning services in and near Seattle, Washington, as well as throughout Washington State and the surrounding regions in the United States.

What type of books are you scanning?

We can scan: 

  • Historical books
  • Notebooks
  • Lab Notebooks
  • Bound volumes & books
  • Publications
  • Newspapers / magazines
  • Medical journals
  • Research papers
  • Machinery manuals
  • Catalogues
  • Personal archives of books
  • Manuscripts
  • Historical letters and diaries etc.
What kind of file format do you provide for books?

The format is PDF in general. If you need a format other than PDF like Word (DOC, DOCX), ePub (for e-readers), JPEG (for images), and TIFF (for high-quality images). This flexibility ensures that the digital version of your book can be accessible across various devices and applications, catering to different needs, whether it's for reading on an e-reader, editing in a word processor, or archiving in high-quality image format.

In summary, our scan book to PDF service is designed to meet a wide range of digital formatting needs, making it a versatile choice for digitizing books.

What if my book is old and fragile?
The book scanners we use are designed to handle fragile books without damaging them.
Can you scan my old books?
Yes, we are scanning old books. Our professional book scanners are designed to handle fragile books without damaging them.
How to scan a book without damaging it?
ScanHouse America can scan the book without damaging it. Our professional book scanners scan books without damaging them.
What is OCR?

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology that enables images to be converted into searchable data. After we scan your book, each letter in your book will be searchable. It is not 100% accurate but it works.

Is the OCR result correct?

The OCR result is only as good as the original hard copy image that it was scanned from. If the original was clearly printed machine text, then the OCR result can be as accurate as 98% or 99% at the character level. However, if the text on the original was obstructed, or if the original page images were weak in contrast or poor in image quality, then the accuracy of the OCR will quickly diminish.

Can OCR recognize my handwriting?

No. OCR doesn’t work for handwriting or special fonts.

My book has multiple languages on the same page. Will it convert correctly?
We use an advanced multi-lingual OCR process that can convert many languages except for Arabic, Farsi, and South Asian languages such as Sanskrit.
Can you scan my paper to an MS Word format?

Yes, the OCR result can be saved to .doc or .docx format, but understand that much of the formatting characteristics, such as tab indenting, and numbered or bulleted lines will be lost or not carry the actual formatting characteristics.

Will I be able to search the text on my book?
As long as the printed text is machine printed (not hand-printed), and it is clean, readable text, and not obstructed, then the text can be captured using OCR technology to allow the PDF to be content searchable.
I have a bound book that cannot be unbound. Can you scan these?
Yes, we have specialized Book Scanners that are used to capture the page images from bound books, without having to remove the pages or unbind the books.
What is destructive book scanning?
Destructive book scanning is digitizing unbound books by separating and scanning each page of the book to develop high-quality PDF files, which can be used as e-books or to create a brand-new run of printed books.
What is non-destructive book scanning?
Non-destructive book scanning is the process of digitizing books without causing any damage or alteration to the physical book. Unlike destructive scanning, where pages are separated for scanning, non-destructive methods involve scanning the book while it remains intact. This process typically ScanHouse America uses advanced scanners that can capture high-quality images of each page without needing to remove them from the book's binding. The resulting digital copies, often in the form of PDF files or other digital formats, can be used for digital archiving, creating e-books, or for online access. This method is particularly important for preserving rare, antique, or delicate books where preserving the original physical form is essential.
How much does a book scanning service cost?

We offer a FREE, no-obligation quote for our book scanning services. All you have to do is call (425) 818-1221 or fill out our online form.

The cost of a scanning book can vary widely based on the size, format, and condition of the original documents as well as the type of services you require such as HIPAA, shredding, or optical character recognition (OCR).

How do I properly count the pages? What if my pages have text on one side only?
We count pages like a book does – one leaf is two pages. Turn to the back of the book and check the page number of the last page and you’re good to go. If the book has only one-sided text, it depends on whether the order is for destructive or non-destructive scanning. If the order is for non-destructive scanning, we still require payment for both sides, as our scanning process does the two facing pages at once, therefore the time and labor are the same on our end. However we will not send you blank pages, we will remove them during the final processing. For destructive orders, you can count single-sided only.
Do you offer volume discounts?
Yes, if your order is for more than fifty books, please contact us for a volume discount quote.
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Gain unlimited access to your books by converting them into digital format