Many schools, Colleges, Universities and libraries have scanners available for the use of their staff, students and the public. Scanners are becoming increasingly affordable, and they are a commodity like photocopying in many places. Scanning The first part is like taking a photograph or making a photocopy of the page, but instead of the result being copied to paper, it is registered as bits by your computer. It is a digital photograph. This picture is then analyzed by a piece of software which recognizes characters.
Scanners take digital pictures.
There are many different manufacturers of scanners, many of them on the Web. Microtek A manufacturer of scanners for personal computers. Ideas on Scanning and OCR, tips and so on. Mustek A Manufacturer, with links to Software companies, and web resources related to scanning. Visioneer - a low cost scanner designed for rapid document processing.