[kwlug disc.] OT: scanners

[Cedric Puddy]

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Fujitsu makes a variety of workflow oriented scanners.  (I've know  
folks who use them as part of automated workflow for auditing  
transport truck driver logs, for example).

They are compact little units that have a ADF, scan both sides in one  
pass, in colour or black & white.  They are USB devices.  They  
definitely have Win/MAC drivers, but I've only come across them in  
packaged-vertical applications, where they are being used as part of  
a fully integrated package, so I haven't had a chance to check them  
out on Linux.

Regarding OCR on linux, check do some searches on Groklaw.  OCR is,  
of course, a topic near & dear to their heart there, and there was an  
article a couple months back that PJ pushed out talking about a good  
OCR engine that Sun or Google or something had rescued, put out  
there, and were actively putting some resources into improving...  
naturally, the exact name of the thing escapes me, but it sounded  
like it could be quite capable.

- -Cedric

On 9-Mar-07, at 5:29 PM, Insurance Squared Inc. wrote:

> Anyone have any suggestions on what I might use as a scanner?  I  
> need to scan in 5K-10K+ pages.  It doesn't have to be fast (though  
> that would be very nice) but it does have to be automated and two  
> sided.  Nor does it have to be linux or windows capable, I can dual  
> boot into both.
> Basically I've got a great big pile of large books.  The local  
> printer guillotines off the end for me leaving the pages free.  Now  
> I want to run all those books through a scanner and end up  
> with .tif files so I can run it through OCR software which then  
> makes it searchable.  I've been scanning the books nondestructively  
> with an opticbook 3600 scanner but some of my books are just too  
> big for it.
>
> Also, if the answer is just a scanner with page feeder from  
> staples :), does anyone have something like that that they'd rent  
> me for a few days or a week to try before I buy one?
>
> And just to keep this post on track with linux....are there any  
> linux based OCR programs that are as good as the commercially  
> available stuff for windows?  I've not seen anything, certainly the  
> GPL'ed stuff I don't think touches what's available on windows for  
> like $100.
>
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    Cedric Puddy, IS Director            cedric at thinkers.org
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