Why?

Several people have asked me how I have my school textbooks in PDF format, so I thought it would be an appropriate topic to post up here.  Usually the first question I get is WHY would you want your book in PDF format?  I can think of several reasons why I prefer it:

1. Can view or read material directly from your computer or mobile device
2. Makes it very easy to search for a specific term or phrase
3. You can bring to class just a printed chapter or subsection rather than an entire book
4. If you ruin a page with writing, highlighting, etc–you can just print it out again

If any of the above if of interest to you, then having your texts to PDF may be a good idea.

How?

Since virtually no legal publisher providers their books in digital format, we’re on our own to convert them.  There are several ways to do this, some quicker, some cheaper–but I’ll cover them all.

In my opinion, the best way to convert your book to PDF is to simply let someone else do it.  C’mon, its the American way!  Simply put, you take your book(s) down to a printing shop and they can do all the heavy lifting.  Not all places will do this, some Kinkos will and some won’t, so call around.  Technically it is a copyright violation–but good luck trying to convince the minimum wage clerk about fair use laws.  Mom & Pop printing shops will usually do it.  Pricing can vary.  The place I use wanted $0.25 per scan but I talked them down to $0.13.  Obviously not the cheapest, but if you have the coin for it, I find it worth it.  I’ll also describe each of the steps if you’re doing this yourself.

The key steps are:

1. Chop off the binding
   Using special machinery, the shop will cut the binding off the book and make a clean even cut of the binding edge of the pages to remove any residue glue.  If you are doing this yourself, I suggest you still have a pro perform this step–it only costs $5 and will save you a million headaches if the glue gums up a scanner.

   

2. Scan in the page
   A printer will then take the pages and drop them into an auto-loading feeder for their scanning machines.  It is important that they be able to provide duplex scanning, which is scanning of both sides of the page.  Most do, but CYA and ask first.  The auto-feeder is simply the same as the feeders found on office copy machines so they can speed through the stack of pages and create digital images.I have done this step on my own using my office’s multifunction copier, which served as a scanner as well.  The feeders on these machines can be finicky at times, so try to limit the number of pages you load at a time to 100.  This will help prevent jams.  Also make sure the pages are free of any glue debris and don’t have any folder corners which can cause problems.  This is obviously a much more cost effective solution, assuming you have access to such a machine and a few hours to burn.

   If you don’t have access to quality office equipment, duplex scanners with autofeeders are also available to the public for reasonable prices from companies such as Kodak, HP, Brothers, etc.  They’ll run about $300-$400 but will pay for themselves in a year.  Important to note that since these are not commercial machines, the autofeeder will handle less of a batch and will also scan much slower, increasing the overall time spent in the proces.

   The real cheapo option is to use a flatbed scanner and do it all by hand.  If you have a week with nothing to do, sure.

   I suggest scanning in the table of contents, indexes, and other supplementary sections.  They’re very helpful.

3. Convert to PDF
   Once the pages are scanned in, converting to PDF is the easy part.  Commercial scanners, like ones found at printing presses or at corporation often have the capability built in–the output from the scan IS in PDF format.  Even consumer devices included this functionality and necessary software.  Printers will provide you a single PDF file on a CD, which is about 200 megabytes for a 1000 page book.When you are doing this on your own, it may be best to give each chapter its own file as processing the files can eat up a lot of system memory.  Even for the single massive files a printer can provide, I still break them down into smaller units to be more manageable.
4. Optimize
   The final step is to optimize the PDF produced by the printing press or scanner.  This step will require that you have a full version of Adobe Acrobat or other similar tools that can read/write PDF format.  The first part is to run OCR (optical character recognition) which converts the images of the letters into actual text that can be highlighted, copied, or searched upon.  To execute this in Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0, from the menu select ‘Document–>Recognize Text Using OCR–>Start’.  Select all the pages on the next screen and let the process finish.  It is not quick and will take about 1-2 seconds per page.

Once that is completed, you will then wish to run a PDF optimzation on the file which will decrease the file size where possible.  This is also available in Adobe Acrobat by selecting ‘Advanced–>PDF Optimizer’ from the menu.

This will open a sub-window of options, but I just leave the defaults and let it do its magic.  Once done you now have a PDF version of your textbook, searchable, printable, and highlightable.

What Now?

Now that you have your book full digital, what is left over of your book may make you want to cry considering what you spent on it.  Fear not, people WILL still buy them on Ebay as long as indicate that the book is unbound.  You never know, maybe someone else is looking to digitize the book as well.

Whether you choose to print out the entire book or keep it electronic only is your decision.  I prefer to print them on 3-ring-punched paper and take a chapter or two to class with me.  I also typically have a page or two on me for quick reading whenever I suspect I’ll be: stuck in traffic, waiting at a restaurant, bored at work, etc.  Its much simpler than carrying around all 1000+ pages.  I don’t need to be worried about folding up the pages or crumbling them into a bag–I can just print up another one when I want.

Last but not least–I’d advise avoiding trying to make a quick buck and selling copies of the digitial books to other students.  Lets be realistic here–do you really want to get on the bad side of the legal publishing industry by commiting copyright infringement?  I wouldn’t either.

On the flip-side though, if you and a bunch of friends wish to split the cost of having a printing company perform the above steps for you, as long as you each own a physical copy of the book, I can see no reason why this would be prohibited (but then again, I’m only a 1L, I haven’t taken ‘copyright’ yet).

I hope this helps you out.

I wanted to briefly comment on the total disrepair our school systems appear to be in.   As someone who’s has been through the public school system, I was always of the belief that the education provided was more than adequate if one put the time and effort into it.  Coming out with a high school diploma wasn’t going to get you very far but a lot of basics were in place–the ability to read, write, basic math, and history.

Fast forward fifteen years and I decide to obtain some post-graduate degrees.  What I expected was that I’d be sitting side-by-side with much younger peers, recently out of college with higher learning freshly on their minds, and for the most part I was right.  What I found shocking was the level of education some of these so-called college graduates had.  Basic facts and concepts that I would have expected to be instilled at the high school level had not even occurred at a collegiate level.

What has happened here?  Why has this occurred?  Have our standards diminished so low that our schools are permitted to deteriorate to the point that we can no longer feel confident that they will provide a decent education?  Will I be forced to send my daughter to private school just for her to be prepared for the real world?

Each day I sit side by side with others who haven’t read the Declaration of Independence, that aren’t aware that the US Civil War had larger implications that just slavery, or that academic writing forbids the use of first and second person personal pronouns.  Don’t ask them to identify where Afghanistan is on the map.  It’s truly shocking.

I’m glad to see that President Obama is looking to improve our education system, and not only does it need to happen at the grade school level, but the university level as well.  Many students are skating through college and earning a degree based on attendance, especially as professors incorrectly feel the pressure of having to provide higher grades to justify the exorbitant costs these schools charge.  Maybe a decrease in collegiate education should be had.  I sure wouldn’t complain if some of that government bail-out money was instead used to indemnify existing student loans.