OpticBook A300

The UNIVERISTY OF KANSAS SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

ON SALINA CAMPUS GOES GREEN WITH HELP FROM PLUSTEK’S ST BOOKSCAN CENTER

Plustek Helps Medical Campus achieve its Goal to Go Digital

The University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina opened in July 2011 as an innovative medical education program designed to address the shortage of rural doctors in the United States. The goal of the program is to attract medical students with a strong interest in practicing rural medicine and encourage them to stay and build their own practices in rural areas after earning their degrees and completing their residencies. The new campus’ curriculum is tied to the classroom offerings at the KU Medical Center’s campuses in Kansas City and Wichita. The learning process relies heavily on video-conferencing, with students in Salina participating in lectures with their peers in other cities and receiving many of their lectures via podcast.

To keep the program functioning at its highest potential, Salina campus leaders decided that the best way to streamline costs was to go green by using products such as scanners that are more cost-effective than printers and reduce paper waste.

School administrators reviewed their options and were leaning toward a large and expensive book scanner that had been used with great success on another campus. Before deciding on purchasing it, they were introduced to Plustek’s ST BookScan Center, which offered features similar to the larger scanner but was more cost-effective. Because of its size and price point, KU School of Medicine-Salina administrators opted for the ST BookScan Center. They believed the ST BookScan Center was a good match for the school’s highly computerized curriculum. School administrators believe the medical students will find it more suited to the electronic delivery of course materials than a traditional copier. 2

“We’re hosting a new generation of students who are much more comfortable and tech-savvy than ever before, so I’m sure they will think of endless ways to use the scanner in ways we haven’t even discovered,” said Lucy Kolhoff, senior coordinator, KU School of Medicine, Salina campus. “Because of the distance from the main school, our campus uses digital methods of communication, so the ST BookScan Center works well with what we’ve been trying to create, which is a highly accessible place to learn and retrieve information quickly.”

Currently, Kolhoff is using the ST BookScan Center for archiving and digitizing documents that are easily sent to the main campus. The scanner is located in an accessible spot that allows medical students to readily scan library materials to thumb drives and emails as well. Kolhoff believes that the Plustek ST BookScan Center would be ideal for businesses and educational facilities that rely heavily on paper and toner but want to go green. Kolhoff said that its user-friendly software made the ST BookScan Center simple to understand and easy to use.

An ideal alternative to the copier, the Plustek ST BookScan Center can scan books and large format documents to a USB flash drive, shared network folder, FTP site, email address or even a printer. The system is easy to use and does not require user training. Prompts on the touch screen display guide users through the scanning process and enable them to save books, bound materials and documents in a variety of formats including searchable PDF. The ST BookScan Center was created based on the concept of book preservation, digitization of content and sharing of the book electronically. It can scan up to A3 size page (12” x 17”) in just 2.4 seconds. Thanks to Plustek’s patent pending SEE technology, spine shadows and distortions are eliminated and thick books are scanned without unbinding or dismantling making it a perfect solution for digitizing precious and valuable books and documents. The optional coin-op/card-op payment system can be added for organizations that want to generate revenue from the use of the system. 

General Education and Special Education Classrooms

The Plustek EZ BookScan Center copies, scans and prints ledger size -- making legal and archiving work effortless

Becky Haydel has been a successful Deputy Clerk of Court in Franklin, Louisiana for many years. Becky’s responsibilities include scanning and archiving all of the original documents filed with the City for land pre servation purposes. The job role requires her to ensure that all public documents and records are available to the general public for review and copying in an ongoing and timely manner. Her scanning duties become even more sensitive (and time intensive) when it comes to scanning aged (and often bound) documents that are susceptible to damage when scanning in the traditional fashion.

“I use the Plustek EZ BookScan Center several times throughout the day to produce copies of the original documents that have been bound into book volumes,” explained Becky. “This Plustek GreenScan System saves me time because it allows me to scan my next document page while the first page is printing.”

Although the courthouse had an old book copier that was modified by Binder Minder and still worked, it would not allow them to copy up to the book’s binding. Adam Crappel, of A & E Office Machines, Inc., spoke to Becky about a different option. He introduced the idea of using the Plustek EZ BookScan Center which consists of a Plustek OpticBook A300 scanner, kiosk-like software, and a touch-screen computer, and printer that would operate similarly to their original copier, but would provide more features. This solution proved more efficient with better copy quality and ease, using touch screen display allowing her to see the scanned document before it printed.

Becky finds relief in a dedicated document and book scanning solution that is convenient, efficient and produces quality images. The Plustek EZ BookScan Center scans an A3-size page in just 2.4 seconds, creating a crisp, sharp image, which can then be turned into different formats. The solution includes highly effective image processing, fast and secure PDF conversion and highly accurate optical character recognition (OCR) software. The scanned output can be saved to a flash drive or shared network folder, sent to an email address, printer or FTP site, Becky found these features in the Plustek EZ BookScan Center more advantageous than the features in their previous photocopier/software hybrid.

“The Plustek GreenScan System is very useful in producing excellent scanned copies from our older bound records,” said Becky. “Producing quality images and saving me time makes my job easier.”

One of Becky’s main responsibilities is assisting anyone doing research with the court’s records. “Saving time on scanning documents has allowed me to give assistance to those who need it, when they need it.”

The Plustek EZ BookScan Center is an ideal solution for libraries, schools, graphic designers, publishing companies, hospitals, law firms, court houses and financial institutions. The Plustek EZ BookScan Center scans thick books without unbinding or dismantling them, making it a perfect solution for digitizing and preserving precious and valuable books. Particularly useful with bound materials, the Plustek EZ BookScan Center also includes a patented design that eliminates the book spine shadow and text distortion of traditional book copying and scanning. Plustek’s patent-pending SEE? Technology (Shadow Elimination Element) combines a patented lamp light with a special edge design that allows the scanning module to scan right up to where the book spine is placed. This clever design avoids the need for a large, expensive overhead scanner or complicated image-editing software. With Plustek’s SEE? Technology and the Plustek GreenScan System’s clearly-scanned pages, Becky is able to produce perfect scan results, even near the binding. 

This latest edition to the Plustek product line is available from A & E Office Machines, Inc and select Value Added Resellers nationwide. For more information, call 714-670-7713 or email   infousa@plustek.com