Thanks Trevor! I'm not familiar with Omnipage. It sounds as if it is similar to Kurzweil 1000, which, as I understand it, is capable of OCRing any document that can be potentially printed, including scanned-in pages of articles. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) I would like to hear from folks who have experience with this Kurzweil 1000 function (or with Omnipage).  What are the current problems? Are they likely to get resolved as technology advances?

I'm trying to form an opinion on this emerging technology: Should we, as accessibility-advocating librarians, keep up our resistance to an electronic reserve system that contains image-based/scanned-in material, or should we concede that advancing technology makes concerns about the accessibility of image-based documents increasingly a non-issue? Should we pursue strategies that would result in the placement of accessible, text-based materials on e-reserves, or is it wiser to channel our energy into a different direction? 

What do you people think?

Axel

  

-----Original Message-----
From: Trevor Wilks [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2002 12:50 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Docutek's electronic reserve product (ERes)--update


Hi Axel,

Our E-reserve just uses PDF format. Last year this was really problematic and we had to test the Acrobat 5.0 OCR plug-in (Paper Capture 3.0) which was a unsuitable both to students and Library staff.

This year we purchased Omnipage 11 which will OCR an image only PDF file and we teach students to do this themselves. Its not always very accurate depending on the quality of the original scanned material but it seems to be working quite well.

Trevor

Trevor Wilks - Manager
Adaptive Technology Centre
Student Support Services
Student, Alumni and Community Services
University Services
Auchmuty Library
University of Newcastle
University Drive Callaghan
NSW 2308 Australia
Ph-02 49218684
Mobile-0418 753739
Fax-02 49217410
Email- [log in to unmask]