4 replies to this topic

[StandingFirm]

What scanner do you recommend for scanning in order to make esword books?  Thanks!

[Tim Butterfield]

It is the OCR software that makes the difference much more than the scanner. 

 

Most scanners are pretty much equal these days, but the Optical Character Recognition program is what takes the document from a picture of the document (which is what the scanners produce) to a document made up of letters forming words.

[LarryG]

Here is a link to a blog post Josh made last year.  It lists all the software he uses in making modules.  For OCR purposes he uses ABBYY FINEREADER along with Microsoft Word.

 

http://www.biblesupp...h-biblesupport/

[Tim Butterfield]

Thanks, Larry I couldn't find that, but I knew someone here could/would.

 

Tim

[Josh Bond]

I use a sheet fed scanner. I cut the binding off of books, leaving a loose leaf stack of paper.

 

I have an older model Fujitsu ScanSnap. I feed the paper through the scanner by placing a stack of paper in the feeder. The scanner scans both sides of the page at the same time. 

 

Many scanners have 2 or 3 color settings, such as color, black and white, and grayscale. 

 

When scanning older books with my ScanSnap, color works the best in conjunction with Abby Finereader. A different scanner might produce different results, but for my older ScanSnap, scanning in color and then letting Abby do the OCR works the best. The files are huge but I have a big computer and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to save OCR time

 

Most scanners have various DPI (dots per inch) resolution. For older books, always choose the highest DPI you have available.

 

Fujitsu has a newer scansnap now called the Scansnap IX500. There's other brands too. Amazon reviews of scanners should be critical in your purchasing decision.

 

I previously used FedEx Kinkos to remove book bindings. But then I realized I can do it at home with a power saw, specifically a miter saw I already had.

 

Stay away from normal scanners, where you open the lid, place a page face down, close the lid, and hit the scan button--unless you have just one 50 page book to scan.