I appreciate all the suggestions - acutally I had already tried the rotating idea. I did go ahead and purchase a new scanner - it's a PlusTek OptiBook scanner. It has what's called "shadow eliminating" technology, and so far I've been really pleased with it. It was only around $250, so not a huge investment. The only problem is there's some peripheral-conflicts with HP devices (printer), but our I.S. team is working on a solution for that.