I built a paper tape reader at one point, lord knows were it is. It's pretty easy -- Two pieces of wood to hold the paper with a mm or 2 shaved off the bottom of one of them the width of the paper tape. Then 9 parallel holes and put optical transistors connected to a 5 volt supply via a series resistor, running into a parallel port the 4th one is used as a strobe to pick of the 8 data bits and small light bulb on the other piece of wood.   You then just pull it through and its self strobing.   Set up a cat < /dev/parallel > /tmp/foo

Your basically done, you'll need to pick reasonable values for the resistors to that match your transistors to switch on/off if the light passed through the hole.  I've forgotten what I used, it something I had in the parts box.