Handwritten document analysis and recognition deals with several different application fields. In document processing, one of the first problems that must be solved is data acquisition. The selection of the appropriate acquisition device plays a fundamental role; it depends on the different types of source documents and on the different application domains. Digital scanners allow both massive document acquisition and conversion of paper based documents into electronic documents. Depending on the environment requirements, the original quality of the analog signal must be appropriately captured and preserved in the digital conversion and the right scanner need to be selected. This paper presents an overview of the main characteristics of the scanners today available on the market and highlights their main properties. By considering the operation difficulties of actual scanners and the properties of the new plastic materials, this paper presents some ideas for future possible developments in digital scanning. 1.