UPDATE - 23 Jan 2011
Please see the Ion BookSaver, which uses basically the same design as the BookLiberator but will be available at a cheaper price and sooner. You can read more about it in Ion's press release.
We have no affiliation with Ion and receive no compensation for mentioning their product -- we just want affordable book digitizers to be in the hands of as many book owners as possible, and Ion's product now looks like the best way to achieve that. We have suspended work on production of the BookLiberator, while we wait to see how Ion's BookSaver is received in the market.
The rest of our site has been left as-is for now.
This is the home page and the documentation wiki of the BookLiberator project. BookLiberator is a set of free software and hardware to digitize books: it lets you photograph all the pages in a book without harming the book. The resulting images can be processed with free, open source software to make user-friendly files in a variety of formats.
We also have a blog that contains all the latest BookLiberator news, including information on when BookLiberators will be ready for sale. If you think you might be interested in buying one (approximately $300 US), please sign up so we can notify you when they're ready. (There is no committment; it's just for notification.)
From book to ebook, it is BookLiberator's goal to make every step as simple as possible.
We're planning to have an easy-to-assemble kit for sale soon, at around $120 US (without cameras, since so many customers will already have consumer-grade digital cameras), plus appx another $200 if you need the cameras.
In the meantime, there are do-it-yourself building instructions available at Manufacturing and HardwarePlans and in our flickr stream, and specific HowTo information over on instructables. The software is all open source.
Blog
The BookLiberator has a blog (and an RSS feed). It's the best way to keep up with the latest BookLiberator news. Alternatively, you can read or join our google group and follow along with the discussion of everything we're doing here.
Help and Documentation
We're putting together help for the software and we've started a FAQ. Check out the index at the bottom of the page for more documentation related pages.
We also have PressClippings, which are documentation of a different sort.
Get Involved
There are a number of ways YouCanHelp! We need devs, documentarians, and testers. If you would like to improve these pages, jump right in and ContributeToThisWiki. If you want to discuss BookLiberator or how you might help, drop a line to Ian, James or Karl.
We're not the only game in town. There are OtherEfforts.
BookLiberator on You Tube
View a video of the BookLiberator in action here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNfQb0NZjWY
Other demonstration materials can be found at DemoMaterials
Partners
The BookLiberator project receives support from QuestionCopyright.org.
The BookLiberator logo was designed by Winnie Fung.