Beth,
The accuracy of the output you get from a scanner is dependent on several
factors. They include: the ocr software used to recognize the scanned material,
the scanned material itself, its lay-out, the quality of the
print, font and style of font etc, as well as color of print and paper quality
and color, your skill at making use of the tools offered by the ocr software to
enable you to get the best scan on a given document, your
technique when scanning, e.g. did you hold the book flat enough to get the
material that is close to the book's spine? and of course, the scanner itself.
Is the glass clean? And what kind of technology is used in the
scanner to acquire the image? Some of the really cheap ones use a less
desirable method whose name escapes me.
Because of all these factors, its not possible to give a one size fits all
answer to your question regarding scanner and ocr accuracy. If somebody says
they had lousy luck with a given scanning system, you'd need to
know a lot more about what they were scanning, how they did it etc, in order to
put the comment into perspective.
Mary
