I'm looking to scan a reasonable number (100's) of books (legally). I've got an opticbookplus scanner, but it's slow and very hard on the books. So I bought an old plenary/overhead camera book scanner. After a bunch of diagnostic bills, turns out I was sold a dud :). And new book scanners are in the 10's of thousands. I'm thinking I'd like to build a homejob book scanner. This seems like it should be easily doable using an off the shelf digital camera or two. Does anyone have any suggestions on how this could be done? Assuming I can mount a camera on an overhead rack of some sort (I could probably use that dud overhead scanner I bought :) ). Specifically, are there any lower/mid cost cameras that would work well, and is there any software that will allow me to control the camera from the keyboard. If the software is linux, even better. So I hit the mouse, it snaps the pages, I flip the page, hit the mouse, it snaps the next page. Mere moments later I'm done the whole book :). I've started doing some research but the options are a bit overwhelming as to where to even get started. So some gentle prods in the right direction would be much appreciated.