Course Web Site Development: Additional Website Components: Digital Imaging: Textual Scanning

Textual Scanning, also called "Optical Character Recognition", or OCR, is a technology that allows you to easily take printed material and convert it to an electronic format. It makes it simple to scan in large amounts of text, which can then be edited by any of the popular word processing packages (Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, etc ...). 

OCR is not without its drawbacks, however. Small inconsistencies with the original copy may occur, but on the whole, OCR is a good choice if you wish to translate hard copies into soft copies. 

To view an example of OCR text, click here. Please note that this is an example of raw text that is produced using our OCR software.  All formatting used by the printed document is lost upon conversion. Individual results from using OCR will vary. 

Instructional Technology Services has 4 available scanners that can perform OCR.  There is no reasonable limit to the amount of text you can digitize using this procedure.

For information regarding the location / availability of our Center, click here.

For directions on how to use OCR to generate text files from their printed text counterparts, click here.