Eli5: how were things like old books digitized for the internet? Did someone scan each page? Did they just re-type it word for word?

Question

I was thinking about public domain books and it got me wondering.

In: Technology

Answer 1

If you do it at a large scale (like in a library or so), there are fully automated book scanners who can flip pages and scan it.
So basically you have to lay a book on it, and come back some times later, when the scan is finished. Then you have a bunch of images which you can convert easily into a text file.