Hello all, Can someone tell me if this is possible - To use a digital camera to photograph obits from old newspapers (1 - 110 y/o), then bring them home to PC, and run it through some type of word recognition program. Ultimately, I would like to record about 500 obits to genealogy program and future personal website. Can someone make a suggestion on type of camera and recognition program for this purpose? Thanks, Max in FL.

Old books and newspaper clippings are difficult to convert to text using Optical Character Recognition even if the original is available. I've had fair results using full-featured OmniPage Pro OCR with a 1930 will typed in a lawyer's office and photocopied. A less expensive OCR product (downloaded) converted every syllable as a separate word from a manual typewriter. Attempted to use photocopies of pages from books published around 1900 and it was faster for a touch typist to copy word for word than edit the text from the OCR. Have not attempted to use OCR with printouts from digital camera photos. Some short obits have been kept as images and printed in family books along with cropped areas of census images. Most obits in my family files have been copied to individual notes so that they are available in GEDCOM transfers when data is shared with other researchers. Obits copied to source text are sometimes cut short or do not print as desired. -- Elizabeth, scanner of family items since 1996 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Max Yates" > To use a digital camera to photograph obits from old newspapers (1 - 110 y/o), then bring them home to PC, and run it through some type of word recognition program. > Ultimately, I would like to record about 500 obits to genealogy program and future personal website.