A lot of librarians have been posting a link to this article on the Espresso Book Machine launch in London.

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

This is a great invention that we’ll probably see in book stores all over soon enough. Basically if a book is out of print you can still get a print version using the Espresso Book Machine! What I’d love to see (and probably never will- cause of copyright) is a book scanner at my local library or bookstore that I can use to make digital copies of books – in particular to make a digital copy of the genealogy book that my in-laws have loaned me with the history of their family!!