I am looking for a scanner with OCR to scan old history books that
have expired copyrights. Any recommendations?

Also, anyone ran across an OCR program that can scan 1000s of photos
of tombstones. I would prefer to give the program a directory of
photos instead of slowly loading each pic.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I am looking for a scanner with OCR to scan old history books that
> have expired copyrights. Any recommendations?
>
> Also, anyone ran across an OCR program that can scan 1000s of photos
> of tombstones. I would prefer to give the program a directory of
> photos instead of slowly loading each pic.
>

Some scanners come with OCR software, but I don't believe it is an
integral part of the scanner or its drivers. I believe that for any
scanner, you can use other OCR software to analyze the results of your
scans. Given your application, it would be a good idea to try to find
the best OCR software you can without regard to the scanner.

I like my Canon DR-2050C. It is smal and compact, can do duplex
scanning and is fast enough for my needs. I believe it comes with some
OCR software, but I haven't tried it. My experience in the past has
been that such software is more trouble than it is worth. The results
require considerable manual correction.

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:51:32 -0700, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>I am looking for a scanner with OCR to scan old history books that
>have expired copyrights. Any recommendations?
>
Any scanner can scan a document or an old book. You then run separate
software to do OCR. Usually, OCR software packaged with a scanner is
not as effective as good software purchased separately. From what I've
heard, Omnipage pro (which I use) and ABBY Finereader are both good
OCR programs.
>Also, anyone ran across an OCR program that can scan 1000s of photos
>of tombstones. I would prefer to give the program a directory of
>photos instead of slowly loading each pic.
This is highly unlikely to succeed. OCR programs have a difficult
enough time reading good printed material. To ask one to accurately
read a picture of a tombstone is unreasonable. You'd be much more
effective simply transcribing the tombstones manually.
That said, I think most good OCR programs will scan a series of
images. I know Omnipage will, and tho I don't use Finereader, I feel
sure it will too.

--
Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/