The MU Libraries have purchased a walk-up scanner for patrons to use. It is located near the OASys (student computer lab) on the first floor of Ellis Library behind the main elevators. Patrons will be able to e-mail their scanned materials to themselves or scan them to a thumb drive. Thumb drives are available for purchase in the vending machine near the north entrance of Ellis. There is no attached printer.
Scanning and saving documents is a simple process. The scanner can do an entire book, or split the scan so the pages are saved individually. Scans can be made in black and white, grey scale and in color. Books can be scanned flat or in a V-mode which will put less strain on the spine. The user can save the documents in several formats (such as jpg, png, and pdf). Optical Character Recognition can be performed, which can result in a searchable pdf or even an audio file of the text being read by “Microsoft Anna.”
KIC scanners have been used with great enthusiasm by patrons and Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery departments in several of our peer GWLA institutions. More information about KIC scanners can be found at http://www.imageaccess.com/dlsg/products_kic.htm
This is good news. My only concern is that we post some sort of statement about fair use and absolving the University Libraries from any blame if a patron copies an entire work.