To deliver reprints of the Classics Series on demand, out-of-print titles were scanned and then were processed by HP to create clean, searchable, high-quality Adobe PDF files for both online and print use. The system used was a scanned document image analysis system specially developed by researchers in HP Labs.

The typical error rate during the conversion of a manually scanned work to a print-quality digital file is approximately three to five percent. Both human error, such as skipped pages or skewed scans, and computer errors, like misclassifying a photograph as text, can cause costly and time-consuming problems when hundreds of thousands of pages are involved, as they were with the Classics Series.

Using multiple analysis algorithms developed in HP Labs, HP was able to analyze and digitally reconstruct pages with an error rate of less than .001 percent. The total corpus of the Classics Series was converted to print-quality .pdf files in less than six weeks.

"Print-on-demand is a model publishers have worked on for a long time, and The MIT Press is excited to be one of the publishers at the leading edge of realizing this dream," said Terry Lamoureux, production manager, MIT Press. "Thanks to HP and our other partners, we are able to offer our customers access to a wide array of previously unavailable titles in high-quality editions at a reasonable cost."

"HP Labs looks to invent ways to radically simplify the processes businesses use to deliver value to their customers," said John Burns, manager of printing and publishing services, HP Labs. "Our work with MIT Press is a great example of how HP Labs can partner with a forward-thinking company to create effective solutions to complex problems."

MIT Press now electronically sends Classics Series orders to Edwards Brothers, which then prints, binds, packages and ships the books within 48 hours of receiving the order. Through the resulting print-on-demand system, MIT Press now has a cost-effective way to fulfill individual orders, even for single copies of obscure or out-of-print titles.