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Re: Digitizing Records from Microfilm



Hello Susan --

Before you plunge into this project (and certainly before your Computer
Systems staff goes spending money on equipment and software), evaluate your
film.  Our company has done quite a lot of scanning from film, and
experience has shown that if you can scan from the original master, results
can be excellent.  But if this film is the stuff that your patrons are
using, it's very likely scratched, fingerprinted, worn, etc. -- and your
scanned images may well be quite disappointing.  As you've stated, OCR is
pointless on handwritten material.  But OCR'ing (?!)  from scratchy images
is pointless as well, since the scratches will break up the lines of the
letters.  The OCR accuracy would probably be so dismal that you'd be better
off simply re-keying the material.  You could scan the images (assuming
they'd be readable) and use a re-keyed text for any word-searching.

I don't want to rain on your parade, because your project sounds like a
great idea!  I just don't want you to spend a lot of money and not be able
to achieve the results that you want.  Please take a good look at the film
before you make any decisions.  And -- here comes the professional plug --
Our company can do a free sample of images and OCR from your film for you --
it'll give you a good idea of whether this is something you want to pursue.
Feel free to contact me at the address/phone/email in my signature and I can
put you in touch with the proper person.

Hope this helps!
Best wishes,
Susan (Another one!)
***********************************************
Susan Stekel,  M.A., M.S.I.
Library and Archives Specialist
Manager, Brookhaven Press
--------------------------------------------------------------
Northern Micrographics & Brookhaven Press
2004 Kramer St.
La Crosse, WI  54602-2287
(608) 781-0850 ext. 137  (voice)     (608) 781-3883  (fax)
susan@normicro.com


-----Original Message-----


I work in a medium-sized public library which has quite an extensive local
history archives and genealogy collection. Our library director wants to
start digitizing records (marriage records, naturalization records, deeds,
etc) which are on microfilm and making them available on our Web page.  Our
Computer Systems staff wants to purchase equipment and OCR software and do
the project in-house.

My concern is that we do not really have the staff to do this properly and
that original handwritten records cannot be read accurately by OCR software.
Should we contract this work out to a reputable company?  Should we scan the
records as an image only rather than deal with OCR software?

Any thoughts or advice in this area would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Susan Dehler
Archivist
Vigo County Public Library

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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>