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Maybe not years ago, but scanning documents with the phone in your pocket has become incredibly efficient. That combined with AI transcription and indexing for search makes such a project faster and cheaper in 2026 than at almost any other time in the past.

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I scanned an entire book in 2016. It was way faster than scanning with the phone in my pocket. It’s just not ergonomic to use a general purpose device (a phone) instead of a specialized device (dedicated scanner).

Agreed. I scanned a short book with my phone, and a dedicated scanner would have been nice to have.

But with page flattening and separation and automated capture, it went much faster than I would have thought. If I were going to do a lot more, I'd want something like a scan tent [1]. It's not as ergonomic as a dedicated solution, but in 2026 a phone and some light can get you a lot of the way there, pretty fast.

[1] https://www.transkribus.org/scantent

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