digitizing libraries (personal or group)

Copyright is a major issue. But you can easily start with things that are no longer under copyright.

For books still under copyright, it is legal to make a copy for archival purposes, you just can't use both the original and copy simultaneously. The original can be your archive, and the digital can be your working copy -- there's no rule that says your copy must be the archived. Some libraries do this now, basically, letting you check out a "digital" copy as long as they have the print copy still available. That does involve a non-trivial programming aspect if you want to check things out online. But that's not my point. My point is to digitize, so they can read digitized versions AT the library, and the original book is stored off in the storage stacks. That's how things were done in my university libraries. Not everything is out on the bookshelves -- there's simply not enough space. We can put in request to "retrieve" an item, and it is available to us by the next day or whatever we scheduled. When things are digitized, the retrieval is instantaneous -- just like my digitized library is instantaneously available on my laptop.

Regarding expense, that all depends on how much you want to do right away. Print books aren't indexed, so it's not a must that digital copies also must be indexed. I am digitizing my library. All the scans are done by imaging first anyway, and then if you want, you can run it through OCR immediately or after the fact. It's all automated anyway. The only issue is how much "bonus" features you want. I just want to have my library on my laptop and not have to lug around a 25-50 commonly used catalogs/books. I used to keep a second set of printed books at my other out-of-city office location. Now, I don't have to do that, and most of those books/catalogs (as well as older editions) are stacked/boxed in my storage facility instead of taking up shelf space in my stamp study room. This is really minimal expense other than purchasing a 600dpi scanner and time. This is what I was referring to as doing a simple basic step-by-step digitization of the library.

Making the digital library accessible online for off-site users and indexable/searchable is a "bonus", that I agree would increase cost significantly, but that can done much later. People can always go back to the old fashioned "mail-me-the-book" method currently available. My point is, the space savings is enormous, opening up more space for examination/access of reference collections or special exhibits. I know a lot of us prefer print books -- but let's face it, we're a dying breed and APS needs to move forward, even if it's starting off with baby steps.

I remember when I first used microfiche at my local library in the 1970s. That really opened up my eyes. Yes, I used the paper indexes, but decades of newspapers/books were suddenly available at the request of a specific microfiche roll, which took up much less storage space. The newspapers/books, were put into storage elsewhere unless you put in a request to see the original -- even then, for reference (not check-out) only.

That is correct. However, it is overly difficult to convert it to text-searchable pdf via software. When done altogether immediately after the scanning or pic-taking process, a searchable pdf can be made seamlessly and you can simply walk away to get a new and the software will be done by the time you return.

If after-the-fact, the images need to be extracted from the pdf, run through OCR, and then repackaged as searchable pdf. I wouldn't be surprised if there is software that can do that all in one shot as well. Currently, I do it manually if I have to.