PURPOSE: To facilitate reading by providing a light emitting means emitting a different monochromatic visual light, a light collection means collimating a read light, a drive means driving a light switch means to the reader.

CONSTITUTION: A light-1 emitted from an LED 1 being a light source for read operation and a light-2 emitted from an LED 2 being a light source to display information such as a character or a symbol onto paper of an English magazine 8 are reflected in the paper and part of the light transmits through a lens 6 and an image is formed on a sensor 7. The light-2 emitted from the LED 2 transmits through a lens 3 and becomes a collimated light, it passes through a slit of a liquid crystal shutter 5 and is made incident into the paper. A liquid crystal driver 4 is connected to a liquid crystal shutter 5 through a segment bus 10 and a common bus 11 to drive the liquid crystal shutter 5 and forms a letter 'OK' on the liquid crystal shutter 5 when the result of read is excellent and a letter 'NG' on the liquid crystal shutter 5 when the result of read is not excellent. Thus, information useful for the reading is given to the reader operator to make the read easy.