THL Toolbox > Scanning & OCR

Scanning & OCR Technical Documentation

Contributor(s): Chris Bell, Ben Deitle, Than Grove

Scanning involves digitizing texts or images by using a scanner. Scanning is an easy way to produce PDFs of originally print publications for broader dissemination. THL relies heavily on scanning to digitize journals and books that are either out of print, or to which we have secured copyright permission to reproduce. In addition, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) can be used to actual interpret the text and produce word processing documents with the scanned text. A separate use of scanning technology is to scan print pictures, negatives, or slides for digitizing photography that wasn't originally digital.

Equipment:

• Scanning Equipment

For scanning images:

• Scanning Guidelines For Images
• Scanning Negatives

For scanning texts in general:

• Scanning Texts
• Scanning Books and Documents
• Scanning Journals
• Converting Multiple TIFFs to PDF
• Processing Multi-Image TIFFs
• Extracting Individual TIFF Files from a PDF
• Processing Finished Scans for Inclusion into Online Catalog

For scanning microfiche:

• Scanning Microfiche

For Doing OCR to Make Digitized Texts Searchable

• How to OCR a PDF

Provided for unrestricted use by the Tibetan and Himalayan Library