craschworks

I love books, but they take up a lot of room and aren't very portable. I'm thinking of digitally photographing the pages of my favorite books, storing them on a portable firewire drive, then selling most of them. There appear to be a number of copy stands intended for this purpose (among others), but I don't want to get something so specialized. Rather, what I would like to get is a tripod with an long arm that clamps to the tripod's center pole. At the end of the arm I'd attach a 360' ball joint, which in turn would be attached to the camera. Has anyone else done what I'm proposing? If so, what are your experiences?

[Edit:

Below is a ascii side view of what I have in mind:

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    ||            (ball) (camera)
  ===================O===[  ]
    ||                    ==
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   /||\                (book)
  / || \           /——\/——\
 /  ||  \          ================
====================================