I've never actually done such a project, but have studied the technologies
involved. It is, of course, preferable to convert the documents to
electronic text but, as you know, this entails a great deal of cleaning
and editing. Some feel that re-keying the data is easier and more
reliable. There are, however, two other options (which are not,
incidentally, mutually exclusive):
1) Scan and store the documents as graphics images, and then have
someone add searchable fields to each image, e.g., author, date and
subject. One can then search on the added information, look at the
scanned documents on screen, and print out ones of interest.
2) OCR the documents and *don't* clean them up manually, but use a fuzzy
search interface.
Let me know if you'd like any more information.
Dave James
Irell & Manella
1800 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 203-7926
djames@netcom.com
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