Robots and Computers Are Digitizing the World's Books, Many of Which Will Be Available on the Internet
Deep in the basement of the Stanford University library, hidden among the volumes of Homer and Shakespeare, is Stanford's fastest reader.
It is a robot, invented in Switzerland, that can scan up to 1,000 pages an hour. It turns the pages itself, and even blows air to separate them when they're stuck together.
Stanford's librarian, Michael Keller, says the robot has a giant reading list.
"My personal goal," he said, "is to see how much of these 8 million volumes that we have gathered here — how much of that can we make accessible and more available because they've been digitized?"