Discusses the use of optical character recognition (OCR) technology to produce an ASCII text database. A tutorial on digital scanning and OCR is provided, and a systems integration project which used the Calera CDP-3000XF scanner and text retrieval software to construct a database of dissertations at George Mason University is described. (four…

Describes a project at the Princeton University libraries that converted the pre-1981 public card catalog, using digital imaging and optical character recognition technology, to fully tagged and indexed records of text in MARC format that are available on an online database and will be added to the online catalog. (LRW)

Relative cost and effectiveness of techniques for preparing a computer compatible data base consisting of approximately one million words of natural language are outlined. Considered are dollar cost, ease of editing, and time consumption. Facility for insertion of identifying information within the text, and updating of a text by merging with…

The three articles in this special section on document image files discuss intelligent character recognition, including comparison with optical character recognition; selection of displays for document image processing, focusing on paperlike displays; and imaging hardware, software, and vendors, including guidelines for system selection. (MES)

The 1981 design specifications for the Egyptian National Scientific and Technical Information Network (ENSTINET) stipulated that major end-user facilities of the system should be bilingual in English and Arabic. Many characteristics of the Arabic alphabet and language impact computer applications, and there exists no universally accepted character…