Planning a new Database

[Cheryl Lemire]

Hi Kay,

Sorry I have not gotten back to your db yet. Please email me at [email protected] and I will be more than happy to work with you privately and get you up and running :)

[ken doucet]

[QUOTE=KarenABedeau]Cheryl & Ken,
I've not made much progress since last communicating with either of you. At Ken's suggestion I purchased the OmniPage 15 software. So now I have two pieces of software I don't understand instead of just the A5V7.
..........

I don't think the Omnipage 15 program is going to work for me, Ken. For one thing, I can't get the inner column on each page, because the book won't open completely enough to lie flat on my scanner. The other problem is that there are many pages with no Irish setters on them; by the time I scan them all, I could have manually noted the lack of Irish setters on at least 50% of the pages. As I mentioned above, I haven't a clue what to do with the data once I get it into the OmniPage 15 program.
>>>>

Kay - have you tried using your camera to get the image? You only need to "image" the pages that have irish setters on them and if you try out Omnipage s/w you can see how the OCR process works for you. The OCR will basically convert image to text which can then be used as basis for your either entering data manually or .. of putting the extracted text into an excel spreadsheet and separating it out into relevant blocks that can be imported into A5. 
Keep in mind that in Omnipage you can isolate the block you want to convert to text by selecting the regions containg the data before you do a convert. That way you don't waste CPU / time converting non Irish Setter data. 

How many entries would you say is "normal" for you for one of your source documents? 

If you had high volume of "captured" text that was laid out the same there is software that can regroup the data for you if the layout is consistent. It is the one I used to generate an earlier sample. For now though I would leave this option out until we establish some kind of processing foundation that works for you.

Ken

[KarenABedeau]

Planning a new database

Ken,
Too late - I returned the software. I bought it May 2, so the 30 day return period was running out. I didn't think it was going to make life any easier than
entering the data manually, especially since the majority of the dogs are already in the database. I enter somewhere around 40 or 50 results per awards book.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Kay Bedeau

[ken doucet]

AKC pricing feedback

Ken,
Too late - I returned the software. I bought it May 2, so the 30 day return period was running out. I didn't think it was going to make life any easier than
entering the data manually, especially since the majority of the dogs are already in the database. I enter somewhere around 40 or 50 results per awards book.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Kay Bedeau

Kay, a couple of points. Did you get the pricing feedback from AKC re getting the electronic versions to as far back as they had data for? If you are entering 12x50 entries for a year x # of years you need to recover it may still be worthwhile - you have to do the math but this would be the first route to go. Secondly, the OCR / imaging route I suggested would enable you to at verly least go to a library that has large # of backissues and take a photo of the relevant pages. These photos could then either be tested on OCR end or used as basis for manual input if you so choose. The photo imaging of archival documents is a viable way to get copies. There are people making a career out of imaging courthouse archive documents using nothing but a consumer digital camera and they take tens of thousands of pictures per annum so it is a very viable approach.

Ken