Several people commented about how nice it would be to have a "portable scanner," and some "remembered" seeing "pen scanners."
The problem with those has been that they essentially scan one character at a time, and rather precise aiming and moving over the text being scanned is required. They'r also virtually useless for anything other than text.
A product review at Planon DocuPen RC800, Review Date: 04.11.06, PCMagazine, proposes that there is something new.
This pen scanner doesn't follow the line, it rolls sideways down the page so that it reads a "page width" at a time, and eliminates some of the tracking difficulties with typical pen scanners. It reportedly can save scans of multiple (up to 100?) pages in gray-scale, but only has enough memory for a couple of full color pages; but it just might be able to pick up some of those "difficult" scans – like up against the binding in old books(?). The unit comes with 8 MB RAM, but you reportedly can install larger memory packs.
I assume that the device is intended primarily for capturing text, but the reviewer does say that it does a "credible" job on full color photos. Capturing images may require careful "sweeps" of the thing, but appears possible.
Oh yeah, - - - $300 US, which is a bit "pricey" but - if it solves a problem....