Scanning content for blog -- how to make this process easier/faster

[ChristineRenee]

So I have this idea for a blog that would use vintage, public domain content that I would have to scan.

I have an OK scanner (not the greatest) and the crappy OCR software that came with it.

Can anyone recommend really awesome (preferably free) OCR software?

Also, does anyone have any suggestions for how I can automate this process as much as possible?

 

[cyrix]

Buy a feed loading scanner, then you could just load up a stack of papers and scan them in and OCR. Then you could probably use a tool like tesseract from the command line to OCR all the images in a directory at once.

 

[ChristineRenee]

I guess you're right. I was sort of hoping to do it on a flatbed scanner because what I'm scanning is from old magazines that I didn't want to have to cut into single sheets but that's going to take way too long.

Can anyone recommend a good feed loading scanner? Is that Neat Desk decent or is it too dumbed down for the general public?

Thanks for the Tesseract suggestion. I just looked it up because I hadn't heard of it before. It looks promising.

 

[ZZZnick]

What is your budget for scanner?

 

[ChristineRenee]

What is your budget for scanner?

I don't know... I was hoping not to have to buy a new scanner, but now that I realize it's necessary I have to figure out how much I can afford.

If it is a huge time-saver I would be willing to spend more, of course.

Otherwise I'll probably try to find something used for maybe $200 or less.

Do you have a suggestion for me? Even if it's expensive I'd like to hear it.