[kwlug disc.] OT: scanners

[Insurance Squared Inc.]

Anyone have any suggestions on what I might use as a scanner?  I need to 
scan in 5K-10K+ pages.  It doesn't have to be fast (though that would be 
very nice) but it does have to be automated and two sided.  Nor does it 
have to be linux or windows capable, I can dual boot into both. 

Basically I've got a great big pile of large books.  The local printer 
guillotines off the end for me leaving the pages free.  Now I want to 
run all those books through a scanner and end up with .tif files so I 
can run it through OCR software which then makes it searchable.  I've 
been scanning the books nondestructively with an opticbook 3600 scanner 
but some of my books are just too big for it.

Also, if the answer is just a scanner with page feeder from staples :), 
does anyone have something like that that they'd rent me for a few days 
or a week to try before I buy one?

And just to keep this post on track with linux....are there any linux 
based OCR programs that are as good as the commercially available stuff 
for windows?  I've not seen anything, certainly the GPL'ed stuff I don't 
think touches what's available on windows for like $100.