Ask HN: How can I automatically scan and catalog a mountain of books? • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by 52-6F-62 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

Where is that? I really would like to pay a visit...

That story also reminds me of this fellow (who actually might get me to the middle of nowhere SK): https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/canadas-most-inconvenien...

(Edited to add Apple News links without ads if anyone uses it:

Free version: https://apple.news/Ar3trUQ-cR7C-c9L3YzPYjg

Issue version: https://apple.news/AQD4nDgB4SKi6yTcZy60tPw)

There seems to be a ton of relevant help in this thread and that seems exciting.

Like someone pointed out—something like OCR might be a best first step as it seems like a data entry task at a glance.

It does sound like there may be a significant amount of physical, tedious work involved no matter what software solution you find. Sometimes you have to accept that aspect and push through. Your best bet might be to recruit some physical help there—start a fund or a labour drive or something. Recruit book lovers, etc. Seems worthwhile. Maybe he would donate books to helpers.

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

#102

Post by kabdib » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:11 PM UTC

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #14

kabdib wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/bee…

The last time I looked at this (admittedly quite a while ago) the book bar code contained the ISBN. What was causing the mismatches? Bar codes that did not contain the ISBN? Non-unique numbers?

The ISBN mappings were maybe fifty percent reliable, service by service. So you'd do three or four ISBN lookups and paw through the results, and then failover to the LOC. The Library of Congress numbers were more accurate, but more effort to enter. Nothing worked 100%, and the failure rate on some of the more obscure books was very high.

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

#103

Post by anonu » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

Ideally you'd just do a pass through with a high res video camera, generally make sure the book spines are facing out to capture their names, run it through some image filter to pickup the book names.

Then you'd have to run some algo to match the name with the isbn and tag it with the general location.

Once you get the process down you could run a new video every few weeks.

This is kind of like Google Street view for the book barn.

Am I dreaming? Could this work on practice.?

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

#104

Post by bartimus » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

Sell 5 random surprise books for $15 (ex shipping). Include a box to send back any books they don't want (or any other book). Process returned books (take pictures, put barcode, register title+author). For the next order give $3 discount for every book they sent back previously.

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

#105

Post by libguy » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:40 PM UTC

So where is this barn of books?

I’d like to have a look. Thanks!

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

#106

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by libguy » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #72

Oh, I am very pleased to see this request, and I may have some actual help for you. A number of years ago a west coast startup spent quite a lot of time on a product that could identify books by their spine image which I think is what you want here; finding isbns and barcode scanning them is totally impractical at this scale. A few months before they closed up shop, I introduced them to Brewster kahle at the internet…

likely the dataset never became publicly available

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/9/15235686/kobo-acquired-she...

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

#108

Post by qubex » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

I raised the same question several years ago on this very forum. I got some good answers but none that ultimately satisfied my needs, but they could be useful for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9631362

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

#109

Post by bshep » Sun, May 05, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

A while back i wrote an ISBN barcode scanner which would lookup the item on amazon and fond the price, the script would use your webcam as the source for the image, im sure you could adapt it to your needs, its very simple and has minimal error checking so beware.

https://github.com/bshep/ISBNbarcodescanner

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

#110

Post by swayvil » Sun, May 05, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

Dump them all in a shredder. Blow the shreds through a well-lit tunnel full of digital cameras. Assemble the books from the images. Now it's just a software problem.

(This isn't my idea. Either Rudy Rucker, Vernor Vinge or Cory Doctorow thought it. I forget exactly who.)