<VV> Scanning the Communique

[Guus de Haan]

I'd like to add my 0,02 cents worth to the scanning discussion if I may.

For work and study I've done a lot of paper research and information retrieval. It's also something that has my personal interest.

Try to look at the information from a "use" point of view. Many people and organizations are busy bringing paper contend into the digital world in the way it was originally published. That is not always useful. The way a newspaper is made suits a newspaper but it won't work for a website as this is much smaller. If you have articles covered in several Communiques, it's a lot easier to make this contend so it can be read as a whole. It has been mentioned before, some articles are time related, some are "timeless". It can be very useful to separate these two. Maybe you want to consider a timeline for contend that is indeed time related. These new angles can make "old" information very interesting again.

Keep in mind that scanning to pdf is very convenient but has it's own limits. Pdf's (usually) have a fixed format. Reading a pdf formatted for Legal (A4 for us ;-) on a big screen is perfect, but it's not very convenient if you try to do so on a small laptop or even iPhone. OCR software is good but usually not flawless. Try to find a way to check the output from a OCR scan. Many people OCR-ing pdf's have no idea that word are missing and/or incorrect words are added to the invisible layer. When searching on a computer all this errors will show up.

I also would like to point out that there are Mac users out there, don't get lock-in into a Windows only solution please!

Guus de Haan
The Netherlands
'65 Corsa Turbo-Charged Cvt
Mac-user


Op 22 dec 2009, om 14:59 heeft The Reinharts het volgende geschreven:

> All, There is eight of us on the Commscan committee right now. We are in the 
> process of deciding how the documents will be scanned with the help of Harry 
> and Bryan. When this process is finished we will need volunteers to help 
> scan as there is plenty of information to go through. Jay, I will add you to 
> the list. Thanks
> 
> 
> Jamie
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tony Underwood" <tony.underwood at cox.net>
> To: "Jay Pitchford" <jay.pitchford at gmail.com>; <budpon at cs.com>; "Dave 
> Thompson" <dave.thompson at verizon.net>
> Cc: <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 07:07 AM
> Subject: Re: <VV> Scanning the Communique
> 
> 
>> At 06:39 AM 12/22/2009, Jay Pitchford wrote:
>>> I have access to a nice copier/scanner at the office and might be able to
>>> help scan back issues of the Communique into pdf format. I'll have to 
>>> check
>>> to see if scans are charged for (like paper copies) under the copier lease
>>> agreement.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The trick about scanning Communiques to PDF is more about organizing
>> who has what so that everyone else mixed up in all this knows what to
>> scan and what not to, since someone else might be duping the same
>> issues.    I already posted a list of what I have on hand, including
>> issues I've lost or misplaced along the way, to the other people
>> included in the mix.
>> 
>> 
>> What remains is to organize what who has and then get everyone to
>> agree to which blocks of Communiques, Quarterlies, and newsletters
>> they can scan/convert.   The end result needs to be searchable, which
>> means the text has to be scanned via OCR while the images remain in
>> bitmap form.    Not a problem for the majority of scan/ocr software
>> these days, and as Tony I. pointed out, if you have Microsoft Office
>> on your computer there's already a decent OCR scan program there
>> which doesn't do a half-bad job.    There's already been some
>> discussion on how to best go about all this... anybody wanting to
>> read the discussions so far, ask and someone will forward the CC'ed
>> e-mails to you if you're interested in seeing what it's about.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> tony..
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