LISNews: Librarian News

Interesting story on bookmobiles which provide print-on-demand titles for people who might not have ready access to a regular library.

How it works is that a book or manuscript is first scanned by a high-end Minolta BS 7000 scanner, (one hundred of them were recently donated by the Carnegie Mellon University, followed by a "cropper" treatment whereby all unwanted stains or needless images on the original text are deleted. Before being put on the web the manuscript passes through indigenously developed software called the Optical Corrector Recognizer, available currently in seven Indian languages.

The service is very popular and often 200 people will show up at any given stop. The organizers hope to have service available to all of India by 2008. More from Rediff.