Robot digitizes old books.

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Munich's Bavarian State Library has employed a robot to help it make more books digitally available to any online reader.

The "book drone" will scan around 37,000 works from the 16th century--7.5 million pages--by 2009, according to German media reports. The "ScanRobot" can scan up to 1,500 pages an hour using gentle suction and air flows to turn and then scan pages.

The Bavarian library already allows users to "borrow" thousands of books by accessing them online. It also is collaborating with Google to digitize more contemporary books from its collection.