Since we're a few months down the pike from my earlier note below, I thought I would post an update in case it is useful to others.
Since I wrote the note below I have recently acquired and am using a Canon DR-2580C color duplex scanner (it scans both sides of a sheet in a single pass). This scanner is not a flatbed scanner, unless you shell out the money for the flatbed attachment, which is not required for this task. It is a very compact scanner (approx 7" x 12"), and required a total work area on my desk of about 19" x 12". The scanner is available from a number of sources (1st-in-scanners.com, newegg.com, etc.) for a very reasonable price given its functionality. It comes with a an advance exchange warranty in case of problems, and appears to be very easy to keep clean, etc. In addition to the scanner drivers for Windows (I bought the Windows version to use on XP), in the box you also find CapturePerfect which is a nice scanner utility, and more importantly a full licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard. Acrobat 8.0 is all of the software you need to scan, OCR and create the PDFs. I do recommend using V8.0 of Acrobat, as it scans much much faster. (I also own a copy of Acrobat 7.0 Professional, and it scans much slower than V8.0 using the same scanner.) I'm currently coverting some color magazines with color and black & white photos throughout. While every issue is different due to differing amount of pages, text vs. photos, and color vs. black and white, here's some basic info that might be useful. I'm scanning in 24 bit color mode at 600 dpi, then OCR'ing the text and adding Accessability features to the PDF. For a 52 page issue, it takes approximately 12 minutes to scan the entire magazine, than an additional 11 minutes for Acrobat to OCR the text and add the Accessability features. The on disk storage space required for each issue is ranging from 36MB-44MB per 52 page issue. And the PDF is compatibale with Acrobat readers V5 or later. If I reduce the compatability to only Acrobat V8 readers or newer, this will shave about 5MB off of the storage requirement for each issue. I have not processed any magazines or newsletters which are black and white only, so don't yet have times for those. Once the PDF is on disk, searching is very easy and fast. I'm using X1, one of the search options I mentioned below. Regards Michael --- In [email protected], "Greene, Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Bob, > > The Maine Junction Railroad has just approved a new paperwork > reduction policy. All model railroad magazines (in our library and > future acquisitions) will be converted to electronic format (for > personal use only). We ran a pilot project in late 2005 and early > 2006 on one periodical in which we converted 20 years of the > publication (20-30 page monthly newsletters) into searchable PDF format. > > I ran the pilot with a borrowed Canon high speed scanner (a grayscale > scanner that was available prior to the current DR-3080CII color > version), and a copy of Adobe Acrobat Exchange which we already > owned. This worked very well and went very quickly -- we scanned > several thousand pages and created the searchable PDFs over the > course of several days (not full time) working a total of about 35- 40 > hours. The keys were the Canon scanner which was a duplex scanner > (scans both sides of a page in a single pass), and Adobe Acrobat to > create the searchable PDFs. I used a three year old laptop with the > scanner on a USB port and Acrobat installed. > > I'm now starting the conversion of the rest. It will take a while but > not forever. My preferred scanner is either the Canon DR-2580C (25 > pages/50 images per minute) or DR-3080CII (up to 86 pages per > minute) -- both color duplex scanners which scan each page (both > sides) in one pass. I've not been willing to shell out the bucks for > either of these yet and so am using the scanners on my Canon MP780 > inkjet All-In-One and my Canon multifunction laser copier (MF6530). > Both have Automatic document feeders, were reasonably priced on sale > at Staples, and work reasonably well, but are much slower. The MP780 > will scan one side and then prompt me to turn the document over and > scan the other side. The MF6530 still only scans one side at the > time, but it turns the paper over. I run either of these in the > background, when I'm working in my home office doing other things. I > can only recommend Canon scanners as they are the only ones that I > have found that reliably handle the workload. > > I'll continue to use PDF as the format, created via Adobe Acrobat > since it handles all the scanner interface (via the scanner driver), > creates the PDF and handles the OCR work to make the PDF searchable. > It's pretty much a Start, forget, Proof and Save when it's done app for > this purpose. And if you buy one of the high speed scanners (the DR > models), Canon includes a copy of Acrobat Exchange Standard in the > box in case you don't already have one (~$200 to buy this software > app separately) I've set aside a 500GB disk for storage of the > documents -- the newsletters ran 1-2MB each, while some Operations > SIG newsletters (40 pages) I'm doing now are running 5-10MB each > (more photos & drawings). Color mags will require more -- but I'm not > sure how much -- even if it were 50MB per issue, I could still store > 10,000 issues in this space. And I don't expect them to take that much. > The proofing step is always important when you are > getting rid of the source document. You're just doing a quick > visual, > on screen scan of the PDF file to ensure that all pages were scanned, > the scans were good, the pages are oriented correctly, etc. Usually > this take me less than on minute for a 40 page document just prior to > saving. If you find an error it is easy to re-scan the affected > page(s) and add it in the right place to the PDF. > > In additional I've added a paper cutter which can cut off the entire > stapled edge of any of these magazines in a single stroke. I cut off > about 1/16"-1/8" -- just enough to remove the staple. > > Now to be able to search -- that's easy -- there are three free > search programs which can search all of these PDFs VERY FAST. They > are X1 (x1.com), Yahoo Desktop search (based on X1), and Google > Desktop search. You will need some additional disk space to store the > indexes they create (automatically), but doing text searches is very > fast. I use X1, and it will also let you see the document (from the > PDF) for each of the search results. With any of these no manual > indexing is required. Just start X1 (for example) and put in your > search text, and within a few seconds you'll have all the results > back ready to examine. > > Perhaps more than you want to know -- but it can be done... > > Since I know we're moving at some point -- I know that the equipment > costs will be more than offset by the savings on the moving weight, > and of course it's much much easier to find articles/info of interest. > > Michael > > At 5/8/2007 04:38 PM, Bob Werre wrote: > >Bill & Bill, I too, have a few years of all kind of magazines that have > >less and less value as the years past. I thought of the idea of using a > >flatbed scanner to scan in the articles that were important to me and > >giving the magazine away or recycling them. It is a great way to save > >the articles on a CD or even DVD. The problem is it takes months of > >free time to do that and then indexing the articles in some kind of > >catalogue format requires another trick or two. Does anyone have a > >better way? > > > >Bob Werre > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- > Michael Greene Dunstable, MA, USA > Member: NMRA(Life), NASG, Bristol S Gaugers, The 470 Railroad Club > > National Assoc. of S Gaugers http://www.nasg.org > DCC Corner http://www.dccinfo.com > Maine Railroads http://www.mainerailroads.org > -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- > Yahoo! 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