I've mentioned before that I've been clearing bookshelves by scanning the good stuff to store on a hard drive.

My main scanner for this, since it can scan both sides of a page in a single pass without turning the paper over (and destroying many pages) has a feed roller that needs to be replaced periodically.

I got a notice last week that I've just worn out the SECOND roller and need to replace it. The "Maintenance Manager" says that I've put 210,932 sheets through it so far. That's about 8 linear feet of shelf space that can now be used to store some of the books that have been in piles on the floor, replaced by only about 350 GB of drive space.

And only 147 feet of books left for the ones currently on shelves (which are most of the ones actually worth saving, although "she" persists in asking me to save some of "her" worthless junk too).

The other two scanners I've made a little less use of - required mainly for stuff that's too wide for the little one, but both much slower - don't keep track as visibly and apparently don't need the same sort of periodic fixing, although test sheets on both of them show >20,000 sheets passed on each.

A side benefit is that for the ones where the OCR did a reasonably decent job, I can now search the ones I've converted on the computer to go directly to any individual item (quote, formula, etc) I want in any book (as long as I can guess what spelling the OCR might have turned it into).

The critical importance of getting this done, of course, is that we're very much into "bookishness." "Her" life consists primarily of three activities which are 1.) read a book, 2.) feed the cats, 3.) take a nap. I now have the additional "Put another page in the scanner" (to the tune of "Put Another Log on the Fire") to keep me active - and it's probably more exercise than I'd get otherwise.

John