Kirtas books is digitizing on demand portions of the Bernard C. Middleton Collection of Books on Bookbinding at Rochester Institute of Technology. Thanks to the hardest working man in applying new technologies to bookbinding, the man who is always online, Peter Verheyen, for introducing me to this site. Not everything is available, but there is a lot of very hard to find material here. Cost for downloading a searchable pdf is an unbelievable cheap $1.95. Getting a printed on demand paperback add $10+, depending on the page count.
The quality of the scans are not perfect, and books that are not yet scanned can take 4 weeks to be delivered. It also seems they use some type of scanning machine, which I can’t believe is not damaging the books. I also wish the page margins were in full view — so that I could read the inscription on the title page below, for example.
But they are ledgible, and a fantastic deal for the price. Time to create some more shelf space.
http://www.kirtas.com/bookscanners.php.
Check out the videos. Saw an early version live about 6 years ago. Amazing. The ones are even better…. Everyone should have one.