[TriLUG] Scanning and OCR advice

[Andrew Perrin]

Greetings.

I've just received a grant for a project that will involve scanning and   
storing a substantial number (e.g., around 3000) of short documents. These
documents will be analyzed as text, which means I'll have to use OCR 
software as well as a scanner with an automatic document feed.

The possibility exists of purchasing a new machine to do this with, but my
preference is to buy a scanner and use software (free preferred, but will
buy if necessary) that will work with my current machine. I would be 
grateful for any advice or experiences others have had with scanning 
and/or OCR under linux, particularly debian.

Some specifics:
Hardware: IBM NetVista, Pentium III/1Ghz, 512MB RAM, lots of storage 
space. USB is on-board, but I have not tried using it.

Software: Debian Linux Potato, kernel 2.2.19pre17 (customized kernel), but
I'd be willing to upgrade kernel and/or distribution to 2.4.x and/or 
testing if necessary.

Thanks for any advice.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J Perrin - andrew_perrin at unc.edu - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
 Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
      269 Hamilton Hall, CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA