From: blockedofcourse@foo.invalid   
      
   On 12/7/2025 6:24 PM, Waldek Hebisch wrote:   
   > Don Y  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> I've learned to become less "discriminating" in my collections.  As long as   
   >> I can *read* the content, it's good enough for me (given that the   
   >> alternative was *paper*!).   
   >   
   > Well, I can read low quality text, but I read faster if quality is   
   > better.  Sometimes it is hard to decide if there is a speck or   
   > a dot (or comma, apostrophe etc) on a page.  And if you scan   
   > at larger quantity you probably do not want to proofread each   
   > page, so either you have generous margin for possible disturbances   
   > or you risk badly scanned pages.   
      
   If I can find something, on-line, that has already been scanned,   
   it saves me the trouble of destroying a book to chop it into   
   individual pages and feed them through a scanner.  So, I can   
   spend THAT time scanning something that I *can't* find on-line.   
      
   E.g., I'd rather spend time scanning copies of _Chronobiologia_,   
   service manuals for various pieces of kit or other documents   
   than scanning a bunch of research papers that I can download,   
   regardless of their quality.   
      
   My "library" is VERY big.  Chances are, many of these "electronic   
   versions of paper documents" will not be "opened", again, in my   
   lifetime.  *But*, I'd hate to be forced to choosing which to   
   preserve (regardless of quality) and which to discard.   
      
   > Other thing is OCR: it seem to work quite well with actual   
   > text (as opposed to mixture containing also figures and formula)   
   > when scan quality is high enough.  OCR is valuable if only to do   
   > searches.  Scanning at low/medium quality throws out information   
   > that is hard or impossible to restore.   
      
   About 600 dpi is the point where OCR gets dubious.  Below that,   
   you take your chances (of course, depends on typeface, size,   
   etc.).  And, you typically want to preserve page layout, tables,   
   illustrations, photos, formulae, etc. in documents that have them.   
      
   A better time investment is thinking about how you would categorize   
   the document so you know where to start looking for it.  E.g.,   
   "old projects", "reliability", "algorithms", etc.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)