The man who ripped books…

“I have a sheet-fed scanner — a Fujitsu Scan Snap S510M [$350] — which works quickly. It handles about 20 sheets per minute, scanning both sides. A 200 page book takes about 5 minutes to scan. The problem is turning a bound book into sheets. I’ve been using a utility knife to cut the pages […] the knife only takes a few minutes. In less than 10 minutes I can reduce a bulky 2-3 pound book to a weightless file with all the typography, graphics and even the paper’s color preserved in a PDF.”

A better option, which means you can still sell the books afterwards. Or donate them to a library.

Or you could just run a $65 barcode scanner over the back of each book, keep them (“Books furnish a room”, etc) and then search a lot of your library via Google Books. Plus you get a record of your library for insurance purposes, in case the house burns down. Which in large sections of the American desert/scrubland is apparently a real possibility. I’d imagine it might be quite useful for scholars in repressive countries too, where one might suddenly have to flee the country without a personal library.