[bookshare-discuss] Re: Question about scanners
- From: "Peter Scialli" <peter.s@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 13:13:10 -0500
Hi Pshon,
The best approach will probably be for you to contact Marissa to see
about having those books done. If the timeline isn't critical, it usually
isn't a problem to get the books onto the site. You can contact her by
writing to
volunteer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks.
Peter M. Scialli, Ph.D.
Associate, Technical Projects
The Benetech Initiative
WWW.Bookshare.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pshon Barrett" <pbarrett@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 10:41 PM
Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: Question about scanners
> Hi, Peter, I have about three books that I will probably never get around
> to
> scanning but want to read and see on Bookshare. Will you scan them if I
> mail
> them? Please give me the mailing address.
> Pshon Barrett
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Scialli" <peter.s@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 12:30 PM
> Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Re: Question about scanners
>
>
>> Hi Judy,Knowing what your budget is for a scanner would help in
> suggesting
>> one. At Bookshare, there is a high speed, multi-thousand dollar machine
>> which can scan things very fasst. I personally have two scanners, one of
>> these is a sheet scanner. I also cut the spines off the books. At least
>> most of the time. My sheet scanner is a Fujitsu 5150. It has some
> letters
>> before the model number but I can't recall them. It is duplex so does
> both
>> sides of the page at once. It has a range of resolution settings up to,
>> I
>> think 600 dpi which is too much for most OCR jobs anyway. It does about
> 15
>> pages per minute, so about 30 sides. I use Kurzweil to do the
> recognition,
>> but it comes with software which may work just fine. I think Fine Reader
> is
>> considered to be the best or among the best OCR products available
>> commercially though. The scanner may not appeal to some at first glance
>> because it is not a standard TWAIN scanner. It does plug into a USB
>> port,
>> but uses its own proprietary interface. So Kurzweil, for example,
>> doesn't
>> see it directly. Instead, it produces a high quality PDF file and when
>> done, auto launches Kurzweil for me. All of that is easy to set up and
>> works nicely. The cost was around $400.
>> By the way, there are some options for reconstructing chopped books.
>> Kinko, for example, will bind a chopped book with tape for a couple of
>> bucks.
>> Marissa who is in charge of the scanningoperation at Bookshare actually
>> does get the books rebound and then donated. Overseas, I think, but I'm
> not
>> sure. Previously, Andrea at Bookshare, now moved onto grad. school would
>> donate the books to a prison literacy program. Hope this helps.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Judy s." <mjstouff@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 1:06 PM
>> Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Question about scanners
>>
>>
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > I'm new to the discussion group but have been a bookshare member for a
>> > couple of years. Boy, do I appreciate everyone's work as it's such a
>> > great library!
>> >
>> > We're getting ready to buy a scanner in the next few months, and want
>> > to
>> > make sure it scans and translates the images into text well. I also
> want
>> > it to have autofeed (and possibly two-sided scanning), as I plan on
>> > cutting off my book spines and pulling out the pages (I can hear my
>> > librarian friends shuddering!) to scan them.
>> >
>> > I'm not visually impaired so I don't need to interface with the usual
>> > adaptive sortware for blind users - instead, I don't have much use of
>> > my
>> > hands, so I do everything with voice software which interacts pretty
> well
>> > with any ordinary software I'd need to run the scanner.
>> >
>> > I'd really appreciate any recommendations from this group on which
>> > specific scanners (and their prices) have worked well for scanning
>> > text,
>> > and which is the best optical character recognition software (and its
>> > price) for translating it. We have both windows and mac machines, but
>> > I
>> > think I want to run the scanner from the mac.
>> >
>> > I'm also interested in any hints on software that can handle
> translations
>> > of formulas and equations from a scanned image into print characters,
>> > as
> a
>> > lot of what I want to scan is technical books.
>> >
>> > Also, although I find it easiest to read text files and non-image PDFs,
>> > which format is best for submission of scanned books to Bookshare? We
>> > want to make sure anything we scan is in a form that makes it easy for
>> > submitting to Bookshare.
>> >
>> > Whew! I think that's all my questions, at least for now!
>> >
>> > Judy Stouffer, B.S., M.S., SFO
>> > mjstouff@xxxxxxxxxx
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
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