If I have understood your question correctly, the answer is yes, scanners produce images of whatever you put through them. If you have a letter or document, scanners can also process them and with the aid of an OCR package, they are then able to recognise the words on the page and produce an editable document containing the text from the scanned document.
If all you want is a second copy of a document, then most scanners have a direct copy button which scans and then prints to your local printer.