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Old 01-24-2010, 03:37 PM   #7
pepak
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Posts: 610
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Device: Sony Reader PRS-T3, Kobo Libra H2O
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Originally Posted by RootlessAgrarian View Post
2) artisanal book scanning requires a lot of time and effort [...] Opticbook
It's not quick and easy by no means, but it doesn't take all that much time or effort, really. It depends on how collectable your books are and how much you value them, and how much free time you have. Generally, I tend to do some 300 pages per hour while browsing the net or reading another book, so most of my books can easily get scanned over one evening.

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3) OCR software at present is either (a) very costly or (b) very cheesy.
Don't forget (c) both.

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it's also time consuming to tend the OCR process and then fix the 5 to 20 percent error rate (depending on the cheesiness of the OCR).
Generally, I do my proofing while reading the book, never in an OCR software. It tends to be a lot faster (you would still need to read the spell-checked book anyway), definitely more enjoyable, and gives far better unfixed-error-rate (because an automatic spellcheck can only catch certain types of errors, but can't handle context, grammar and typography yet).

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is it faster to set up a copy-holder stand and (if you are a fast typist) just re-type the book content?
No, but I did download a book that was typed by someone and after reading through several chapters I decided to make a new scan rather than go through the kind of errors the typing process created.

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I do wonder if it would take any more time than the lengthy, high-tech procedure of book scanning and OCR.
Depends. I am sure that if an uninitiated person tried it, the typing might possibly be faster. As soon as you get some experience scanning and proofing, I am damn sure typing will prove far more costly in time, effort and quality of the result.
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