Friday, January 11, 2008

New book scanners from Kirtas

Kirtas Technologies has announced three new book scanners. Quoting the press release:
  • The Kirtas APT BookScan 2400RA is a new, high-volume machine that provides remote access allowing users to capture raw images in one location and process them at another. It is equipped with a high-performance blade server, which enables the remote capability as well as providing increased storage capacity and a faster processing speed.
  • The company also introduced the Kirtas APT BookScan 1600, a mid-size system that captures 1,600 pages per hour. The APT 1600 includes a high-speed server for enhanced processing speed, as well as the Enhanced Page Separator and the Page Edge Sensor for improved productivity.

  • The Kirtas APT BookScan 1212 builds off of the success of the APT 1200. Targeted to cost-sensitive markets with collections of smaller-size books, the APT 1212 provides 300 DPI and is ideal for organizations looking to digitize research materials and other information to include on the Internet.

In discussing the APT2400RA, Kirtas also disclosed "several additional features designed to improve reliability and productivity":
  • An extension kit for digitizing smaller books
  • An Enhanced Page Separator (EPS)
  • A Page Edge Sensor (PES)
  • A new barcode scanner for reading ISBNs or library assigned barcodes
  • New ergonomic features
Check the press release for more details. No information is yet (1/11/2008) on the Kirtas web site. No pricing was announced.

Blog post on the Kirtas Bookscan 800 is here and info on the Kirtas APT2400 is here.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I would advise prospective buyers of this and any other digitization technology to take claims for device performance (resolution, throughput, etc.) as "marketing claims" to be verified by one or more objective measures that cam be directly compared against other systems.

This is what we as consumers do when we compare automobile milage claims. The publishers of Consumer Reports perform this service for myriad other consumer goods, so it is not as if the idea is not a commonplace one.

It is disappointing that the imaging system manufacturers do not take this step on their own.