I've been meaning to contribute a copy of the diagram book for our coach, but what you need to understand, Gary and Jerry, is that it isn't as easy as it would seem. First of all, it is no small book at least physically if not in number of pages, so a lot of time is involved regardless of methodology.
I've tried photographing it, but getting the lighting and other parameters just right to get nice, easily legible renderings has proven more of a challenge than one would think, and having some experience with professional techniques over the last 50 years, I say that with some confidence. Occasionally I've produced adequate results of individual pages or parts of pages for individuals with similar coaches to ours, but for the Coach Assist section I want imagery as good as possible so that component ID text and graphics are without ambiguity and as interpretable as the original.
The only way to adequately achieve that is with a good scanner. Most non-commercial units don't have 18-20" platens, so in the past I've split a page from the book into two scan parts, requiring a reader to overlap them for full interpretation, a clumsy way to do it but certainly useful to someone who urgently needs the reference. Ideally the book should be commercially scanned, but again it is a large book in number of pages, not just physical size; it likely would not be an inexpensive enterprise.
A compromise solution is to use my iPad and a scan app, which I have a couple of, to essentially scan in a full length photograph, a technique Tim Bentley suggested. Such apps can auto-adjust to clip out surrounding background, since you have to be a good distance away to fit the long document in the screen, and ultimately produce only the document's image, and make it a PDF. That wasn't so simple either, due to the limitations of lenses on touchpad devices, and once again, attaining appropriate lighting. I've tried the technique with several other projects too, and sometimes the results are okay for the intended use, but usually I'm not happy with the resolution.
What I think I'll do when time allows is scan, as mentioned, each page in two sections. Then I'll try using panographics software to overlap and reunite the two images into one, but now finally in digital format. It'll take awhile to do that about 40 times. But then I'll be able to send it to Tim for the Coach Assist section.
-Joel
