Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#1

Post by cconcepts » Fri, May 03, 2019, 10:56 AM UTC

This really kind, eccentric guy in my neighbourhood is stockpiling books and has been doing so for years. He has an enourmous barn that he is obsessively filling with whatever reasonable quality books he can get his hands on but he is completely overwhelmed in terms of cataloging/indexing them so customers have to go through his barn sifting through cartons full of books. He charges $1 or $2 for whatever book you dig out.

He buys bulk lots from deceased estates and bookstores that are closing down. Entire shipping containers are being gifted to him and showing up at his barn. The barn is full and he is now storing in shipping containers outside.

There is great quality books among this quagmire but it takes hours of searching to find them. I figured HN might be able to point me to a solution where I could quickly photograph the front cover and have a script/google images compare the image to online info to index the title and author and then perhaps list them online...

I dunno, it just seems like such a treasure trove of books that he will sell for practically nothing because he loves books and hopes that they will find their way to people who want them - the barrier is allowing customers to find what they are looking for.

Thoughts?

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#2

Post by bloak » Fri, May 03, 2019, 12:11 PM UTC

If they are recent books (from about 1980) then they probably have a barcode on the back cover, so use that. My guess is that it won't be worth trying to automatically recognise older books from the cover: a lot of them had a dust jacket, that goes missing, and a cover under the dust jacket that is not at all distinctive. The title might be on the spine, but how many online images show the spine clearly?

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#3

Post by anoncow » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:18 AM UTC

Not sure if this will help - https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#4

Post by viraptor » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:20 AM UTC

Ask a professional. And by that I mean - get in touch with Jason Scott: https://twitter.com/textfiles

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#5

Post by mongol » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:20 AM UTC

Google has a Books API. Look into that. There are smartphone apps that solve the problem of books that have barcodes. No matter what, this will be a huge task to complete. I scanned my small library (2-3 shelves) and was quite tired of it in the end.

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#6

Post by kabdib » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:21 AM UTC

bloak wrote: post #2

If they are recent books (from about 1980) then they probably have a barcode on the back cover, so use that. My guess is that it won't be worth trying to automatically recognise older books from the cover: a lot of them had a dust jacket, that goes missing, and a cover under the dust jacket that is not at all distinctive. The title might be on the spine, but how many online images show the spine clearly?

I tried doing a book catalog about ten years ago. I got about 80% recognition rate by using multiple numbers (ISBN, and the Library of Congress number) and multiple online data sources. It was a pretty slow process, to the point where simply keyboarding the information was easier and less error-prone, and I had to manually enter the books that didn't get any online matches anyway.

Definitely not a "scan/beep/scan/beep" kind of thing. More like "scan . . . uh, scan . . . scan, damn you, SCAN I say! (beep) Okay . . . now the first problem is that 'The Sands of Mars' which I am holding is definitely not 'Great Montana Flapjack Recipes' on B&N, let's try the library of Congress . . . . nope, not 'Annals of 1959 Steelmaking', so (tap tappity-tap...)"

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#7

Post by andylynch » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:33 AM UTC

For books that are not that old, you will often find the info you need on the copyright page - for US publications, the Library of Congress CIP info is there; see http://www.loc.gov/publish/cip/ . Other countries have similar programmes eg the British Library does the same.

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#8

Post by nsomaru » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:43 AM UTC

Goodreads has a scanner in their app (on iOS/Android) that can scan covers although for some reason it automagically adds those books into a "to-read" shelf but I guess this isn't a problem for you if you create an account for the purpose.

The API is severely rate-limited (1rps), non-standard oath and badly documented, but you should be able to get some xml out of it and parse that however you'd like.

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#9

Post by teddyr009 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:47 AM UTC

simple approach would be to ask book lovers around the locality to volunteer with this task. Borrow some barcode scanners and computers. Give'em whatever books they like and it's kinda get-together for bibliophiles.

Re: Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books?

#10

Post by ejdanderson » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:50 AM UTC

The amazon seller app does exactly this. I think eBay might have it built in as well, but I’m fairly certain with amazon you can scan the barcode or cover of a book.