Have any of you had hands-on experience with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software for genealogy sources? I am looking for an OCR program for transcribing old newspaper articles to searchable text. To date I've had marginal success in this area, and I was hoping someone here could lead me to success. When you carefully read the technical support knowledgebase of some of the OCR software, they start warning you about trying to read text from old newspapers. And that has been my experience. Your suggestions and / or success stories will be appreciated. Cordially yours, Young Snodgrass young.snodgrass@verizon.net

Hello Young, Friday, August 19, 2005, 3:28:24 PM, you wrote: YS> I am looking for an OCR program for transcribing old newspaper YS> articles to searchable text. To date I've had marginal success in YS> this area, and I was hoping someone here could lead me to success. The equipment needed to be successful at this sort of OCR job is very specialised and very expensive ... do a Google search for 'Book Eye Scanner' and you'll see what I mean <lol> There are professional OCR packages that can use your own scanner and PC, but again - to get good results means paying quite a lot. I use Abbyy Fine Reader Pro version 5 ( free install from a magazine CD - current one is version 7 ) which scans and reads printed text very well providing it's not too grubby. You should be able to get a trial download to see if it will do what you want. HTH -- Best regards, Barry mailto:barry@yobunny.co.uk MicroSoft Free Zone running Xandros 2.0 Deluxe

Hello Barry and List: Thank-you for your suggestions and advice! Now that you mention it, I've heard of "special" scanners for books, but I'd never seen one. I looked at the "Book-Eye" scanner, and it is easy to understand the physics needed for books, etc. I am certain one of my issues is that the newspaper / type images are not "flat." I can see that the scanned pages are "distorted." (Not too distorted, but probably tough on an OCR program.) However, another issue is that the program I was trying to use is just a little too touchy. On someone else's suggestion, I tried the OCR program included in MS Office 2003. And candidly, it did a better job than a fairly expensive OCR program that was very highly rated by "reviewers." I can see that I need to be more careful of my scans! I have a Canoscan unit I take with me into the field. It fits very nicely into my computer bag. I bought it because I find folks will allow me to scan or copy items that they will not allow me to take and return. Thank-you for your thoughts on this matter! Cordially yours, Young Snodgrass, KC9OE Elkhart, Indiana young.snodgrass@verizon.net ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barry" <barry@yobunny.co.uk> To: <SENIOR-NEWBIE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 1:57 PM Subject: Re: [SR-NEWBIE] Optical Character Recognition Software > Hello Young, > > Friday, August 19, 2005, 3:28:24 PM, you wrote: > > YS> I am looking for an OCR program for transcribing old newspaper > YS> articles to searchable text. To date I've had marginal success in > YS> this area, and I was hoping someone here could lead me to success. > > The equipment needed to be successful at this sort of OCR job is very > specialised and very expensive ... do a Google search for 'Book Eye > Scanner' and you'll see what I mean <lol> > > There are professional OCR packages that can use your own scanner and > PC, but again - to get good results means paying quite a lot. I use > Abbyy Fine Reader Pro version 5 ( free install from a magazine CD - > current one is version 7 ) which scans and reads printed text very > well providing it's not too grubby. You should be able to get a trial > download to see if it will do what you want. > > HTH > > -- > Best regards, > Barry mailto:barry@yobunny.co.uk > MicroSoft Free Zone running Xandros 2.0 Deluxe >