Scanning a book

[funkychunkymonkey]

Anyone know of a scanner that will scan handwriting? Mine on my printer wont scan handwritten text and well, I cant see myself spending the next 10 years typing all eight thousand pages I wrote. I want to get this computerized so I can toss the 12 notebooks that contain my writings. Im sick of moving them.

 

[Ceila]

There is software that can take scanned images and convert them to text. But, are do you really need to convert the handwriting to typewritten text, or just preserve your journals (I assume) electronically?

If you don't need to edit the text, just use the scanner make an image of the page without converting it. Then you would just save those files and everything would be electronic, but the files would still show your handwriting.

But honestly, scanning takes a while, especially if you have 12 journals. I'd just put them all in a rubbermaid container and store them in a closet or someplace.

 

[sunnyday123]

What did you write about on 8,000 pages?

 

[bicker]

I don't think they've come up with "good enough" consumer-retail handwriting-to-text software, yet.

For greatest safety, though, I would scan the journals: Paper is so easily destroyed. I'd scan to the best resolution possible, and perhaps someday there will be a way to convert those images to text. Save the paper journals, if you've got room, but more importantly, make sure you have the data files of the writings in at least two locations, each location not likely to be affected by a disaster at the other. Also, if you're going to store this data on CD-Rs or DVR-Rs, make sure you plan on copying them every five years or so, just in case. (Discs you burn yourself don't really last forever.) If you're storing the data on hard drives, you should also figure that you're going to have to move the date at least every five years to ensure its integrity. (The only mostly-maintenance-free means of storing electronic data is magnetic tape. Either that, or store one copy with an online storage provider, such as Dell DataSafe, or the free Yahoo Briefcase Yahoo Briefcase. While those companies don't guarantee data integrity forever, the reality is that they do all the right things to ensure your stored data doesn't degrade -- but of course, only if you're continue to use their service regularly.)

 

[love2disney]

It is not that the scanner your printer does not scan to text from handwriting. You need to have OCR [optical character recognition] software on your computer. Once yo have that any scanner can do this.

Just so you know while the concept sounds great you will still have to go to each page and make corrections for stuff the computer misunderstood from your handwriting. And depending upon the legibility of it sometimes even every alternate word is misspelt

 

[funkychunkymonkey]

Part of the problem is I write small, and light. I worte a novel about two cops and there lives and the other is about a undercover cop

 

[diznygirl]

Just play around with the settings on your scanning software. You can adjust the contrast, or maybe scanning as a pdf rather than a jpg will give you better clarity.

 

[Tinkmom75]

Would Fedex/Kinkos perhaps have something that would work. You could utilize their machine maybe. Our work scanner does a great job, but it is a very expensive piece of equipment. What about paying someone type it for you?

 

[DancingBear]

I think there is some confusion here. Are you just trying to make an electronic image of your writings (converting your paper to a .pdf document) or do you want to convert your handwriting to a Word document with text that you can edit? For the latter you need OCR. For the former you just need a scanner and hopefully by playing with the darkening and contrast you can get something legible.

 

[NotUrsula]

Another possibility is to use voice recognition software and read the notebooks aloud to your computer. Dragon is very good.

 

[wnissen]

Some DVD-R discs do not last. Some, however, will last for decades. Google archival DVD or Taiyo Yuden to find them.

Also, the highest resolution is not necessary. 300 dpi is plenty. Anything larger will just take up space. Doing a test run at even lower resolutions is a good idea, to see if your writing is still clearly legible at 200 or even 150 dpi.

Handwriting recognition is not really viable, especially for a document of this length. You will spend more time correcting the errors than if you just typed from scratch.

You can also hire someone to do it for you. Prices run about a penny a word. For example, see this site: http://www.artbookbindery.com/ManuscriptTypingService.htm Obviously you have a lot of words, so this is not cheap. A 250 page novel is around 80,000 words, so figure several hundred dollars.

Walt