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I am looking for a way to do mass scanning of documents (scan a lot of documents, each consisting of one or more pages) quickly.

Here's some elaboration on what I am talking about (long, can skip this section if you want) I think that the "go to" for this is a $250+ scanner that just scans fast. Steps are:

1) load document

2) press scan button the on the scanner

3) repeat

The documents will keep getting added to a folder on your computer.
I have even seen enhancements to this. For example, first sorting your documents into 2 piles-- single page documents and multipage documents. Next, load all of the single page documents and scan with a setting "each page as a separate PDF" in the scanner software turned on. Even with the sorting step, this should outperform.

So anyway, I am looking for an efficient method, but on more of a budget. Also, would be great if it would work in Linux instead of having to use a Windows virtual machine. The scanner does not have to be a network scanner. I am thinking one of these 2 methods:

1- scanner able to scan documents one after the other while "holding" the destination setting. The destination could be a folder on my computer, a USB thumb drive connected to the printer, or email server that stays all local (I don't know the first thing about an email server & want to keep it simple so maybe not an option).

2- scan a large stack of documents and then divide it up into parts (separate PDFs) using minimal mouse clicks/ commands.

How can I achieve something along these lines?

whitelightning
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    eh, where does the OS come in play here? You can do all of this on the scanner itself: either store on an SD card you insert of if possible have it connected to a network and hard disk; a NAS for instance. Nothing the OS needs to do for you. You just need to connect to the NAS from the OS. – Rinzwind Nov 16 '19 at 10:54
  • I would start with scanimage --batch ... (see https://askubuntu.com/questions/383568/multiple-page-scan-using-scanimage). You can easily write a batch loop around for 'one key press -> next document/folder'. – LupusE Nov 16 '19 at 11:58
  • Maybe this project will help: https://karl-voit.at/2015/04/05/digitizing-paper/ – LupusE Nov 16 '19 at 12:00
  • @Rinzwind I have some experience with an HP all in one (the model was HP Officejet pro 8610). The device can scan to computer, but only to Windows computers. It puts the file in a folder on the computer. The workflow for that is standing in front of the scanner, until you need to name all of the PDFs. That is a pretty good system, and almost a solution for my post. I don't recall how many buttons you have to push per scan. Supposedly, also, you can scan to USB thumb drive and have that shared on the network. – whitelightning Nov 16 '19 at 12:09
  • @whitelightning that one is 100% compatible with Linux/Ubuntu. Most HP are since the HP Drivers Suite Installation practically embraces them all. – Rinzwind Nov 16 '19 at 13:02
  • @LupusE Good read. But, that user was on the market for something a little higher end (he values OCR). That might be something to think about for me but his needs are probably a little more demanding than mine. He does link to some other commentaries, which I will have to check out. – whitelightning Nov 16 '19 at 23:32
  • @Rinzwind I have researched this and I am quite confident that the "scan to computer" does not work. I don't think it works in OS X (Mac) either. Note that this is a special feature on the HP all-in-one where you choose which computer on the network you want to have the files saved to. There is no input needed from the "destination computer." – whitelightning Nov 17 '19 at 06:34

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