Digitizing & Importing paper records

[Daniel Slosberg]

I just received about 40 pages of family records and am wondering if anyone has a simple and quick way to digitize them and import them into Reunion.

Here's a sample page: http://www.fiddlingwithhistory.com/attic/family.jpg

I'm trying to avoid retyping the data. The cousin who compiled the data passed away and her son doesn't know if an electronic version exists anywhere.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts.

-Daniel

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

I . . .am wondering if anyone has a simple and quick way to digitize [40 pages of family records] and import them into Reunion.

I think you're going to have to do a lot of this manually. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software isn't going to organize the data for you, even if it saves a bit of retyping.

For example, here's what ABBYY Finereader Express makes of your sample page:

2 Children
MOTHER: Bessie Kirchstein (RH-60)
Michael Harvey Freedaan (RN-166)
smz m
B: 220538 at Lowell, Mass.
M: 250661 to Iris Steinert (RH-167) at Great Keck, H.Y.
Living at 33 Craig St., Jericho, H.Y.11753
2 Children
FATHER: Solomon (Sully) Freedaan M.D. (RN-165)
(Married)
Robin Freedaan (RH-168)
SEX: P
B: 040564 at Lowell, Mass.
M: 300588 to Peter Nishnoe (RN-922) at Great Heck, Long Island, N.Y.
(Married)
Living at Edison, NJ
MOTHER: Iris Steinert (RH-167)
Allison Preedaan (RH-169)
SEX: F
B: 250967 at Manhasset, H.Y.
Living at 33 Craig St., Jericho, H.Y.11753
MOTHER: Iris Steinert (RH-167)
Charles Sumner Freedaan (RN-170)
SEX: M
B: 070542 at Lowell, Mass.
M: to Rita 7 Charles' first wife
RM: to Priscilla Golden (RH-172)
Living at 17 Elkins Rd., Box 45,
1 Child
(RH-171) (Divorced)
(Married)
Kingston, H.H. 03848
FATHER: Solomon (Sully) Freedaan M.D. (RN-165)
Susan Freedaan (RN-173)
SEX: P
B: 120167 at Lowell, Mass.
Living at 17 Elkins Rd., Box 45, Kingston, H.H.
MOTHER: Rita 7 Charles' first wife (RH-171)
03848
(Married)
Lillian Kaufman (RN-174)
SEX: F
B: 240506 at Richford, Vt.
M: to Frank Lewis (RH-175)
D: 17 Oct 1994
1 Child
MOTHER: Bessie Kirchstein (KK-60)
Michael Lawrence Lewis (RN-176)
SEX: M
B: 110339 at Brooklyn. H.Y.
M: 210670 to Kathleen Mintz (RH-177) at Hanover,
D: 080987 at Buried Palm Beach Memorial Park
1 Child
FATHER: Frank Lewis (RH-175)
Jennifer Beth Lewis (RN-178)
SEX: F
B: 021072 at Hanover, H.H.
Living at 16880 Colchester Court, Del Ray Beach.
MOTHER: Kathleen Mints (RH-177)
H.H. (Married)
I
PL 33484-6983
Nathan (Haftoli) Kaufman (RH-63)
SEX: M
B: 15 Apr 1878 at Kosanhorodok, Russia
M: 090510 to Leah (Elisabeth, Lisaveta Fedorovna) Hutis (RH-64) at Burlington, Vt.
D: 090628 at Los Angeles, Ca.
2 Children
MOTHER: Sonia (Shandel) Berk (RH-S5)
(Married)
Sylvia Kaufman (RH-38)
SEX: P
B: 260811 at Burlington,
M: 260841
Living at
0504
1 Child
MOTHER: Leah
to Sherman Grancell (RH-37) at Reno,
1469 Carla Ridge. Beverly Hills, Ca.
Nevada (Married)
90210.B-Mail:sgrancell*glsmb.com. Phone (310)241
(Blisabeth, Lisaveta Fedorovna) Hutis (RN-64)
Q*
Horin Terry Grancell (RH-39)
I39TN

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

[QUOTE=Daniel Slosberg;37292]

[Daniel Slosberg]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

Dennis,

Thanks for your reply:

I think you're going to have to do a lot of this manually. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software isn't going to organize the data for you, even if it saves a bit of retyping.

Yes, I experimented a bit with an on-line OCR service but couldn't convert the results into a form that saved much work. Looks like I'll be entering it by hand.

-Daniel

[Daniel Slosberg]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

if you are going to have to type the data in...then consider the benefits....

You're absolutely right. I know that entering the data manually will be an invaluable exercise. I was just looking for the lazy man's way out. Time to start typing....

-Daniel

[Bob White]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

I've been in this situation several times and actually adopted an "in between" procedure. In other words, I scanned/OCR's the documents and then worked from those electronic copies copy & pasting as I reviewed the incoming date. This is only when I get a large document such as Daniel did. Otherwise, like Michael, I'm a groupie for manual entry.

[Daniel Slosberg]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

Started entering data this morning and learned more about Reunion (and my family) in the last few hours than I had learned in the previous few years. I guess that I should thank my cousin for not having the data in electronic form.

[Ken Ozanne]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

I just received about 40 pages of family records and am wondering if anyone has a simple and quick way to digitize them and import them into Reunion.

Here's a sample page: http://www.fiddlingwithhistory.com/attic/family.jpg

I'm trying to avoid retyping the data. The cousin who compiled the data passed away and her son doesn't know if an electronic version exists anywhere.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts.

-Daniel

Daniel,
I usually photograph the document, convert to a .pdf file (I use acrobat but there are cheaper programs) and save that as an e book. It might suit you to store same in multimedia, but I use such things as sources, partly because I have some 300 GB of such. Ideally I would have all my sources stored on my computer.

[LyndaCook]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

I just received about 40 pages of family records and am wondering if anyone has a simple and quick way to digitize them and import them into Reunion.

Here's a sample page: http://www.fiddlingwithhistory.com/attic/family.jpg

I'm trying to avoid retyping the data. The cousin who compiled the data passed away and her son doesn't know if an electronic version exists anywhere.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts.

-Daniel

Another thing I would do before typing this into Reunion is to validate the sources. I had a similar document handed to me that got me started in genealogy. However, it didn't have any sources and I didn't know enough to try to verify the data before entering into my DB. I've now spent a lot of time going back and trying to source everything. I think it would have been much easier working with the smaller file, besides I'm concerned about taking source data from others without seeing it myself. Good luck.

[Bob White]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

.........(I use acrobat but there are cheaper programs).....

How about free and already on your Mac??? Try Preview. Not only is it faster but it renders better and is much more user friendly. And it will do things like highlighting, shapes, arrows, text boxes or bubbles and notes.

P.S. Does Adobe charge for Acrobat Reader in Australia? It's free in the USA. Or are you referring to the Pro version?

I do have a copy of Acrobat Pro on my Mac but I fire that up maybe once or twice a year to make a fillable form or such. At such time that Mac OS updates leave this older version of Pro behind, I will go to something like PDFPen for my very limited needs that are beyond the features listed above.

[Ken Ozanne]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

How about free and already on your Mac??? Try Preview. Not only is it faster but it renders better and is much more user friendly. And it will do things like highlighting, shapes, arrows, text boxes or bubbles and notes.

P.S. Does Adobe charge for Acrobat Reader in Australia? It's free in the USA. Or are you referring to the Pro version?

I do have a copy of Acrobat Pro on my Mac but I fire that up maybe once or twice a year to make a fillable form or such. At such time that Mac OS updates leave this older version of Pro behind, I will go to something like PDFPen for my very limited needs that are beyond the features listed above.

Bob,
Acrobat reader is free in Australia. I use Acrobat Pro.

I tried to convert a file using Preview. It converted only the first of 1000+ images and blew that one up from 2MB to 11.4MB. This is the worst bloat I have seen but it is the same problem that led me to use acrobat in the first place. Not to mention the failure to do what I wanted.

But thanks for the thought.

[Bob White]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

.........images and blew that one up from 2MB to 11.4MB. This is the worst bloat I have seen but.........

That's not normal. I have lots of experience with this. Preview normally makes Acrobat created PDFs smaller by 10-15%. Of course, I can't diagnose from 10K miles away.

[donworth]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

Bob - I just tried exporting a 4MB JPG from Preview to a PDF and ended up with a 44MB file. I tried changing the Quartz Filter drop down on the Export dialog to Reduced File Size and it went to a few hundred kilobytes - but the image was horrible. Exporting to a PDF3 made it 14MB. I suspect there are some default settings in Adobe that have to be tweaked. I've had similar "bloat" problems with using Adobe to produce PDFs. You have to twiddle the settings quite a bit to get files that are reasonable sizes.
Don

[Bob White]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

Hm-m-m-m! I was speaking only of PDF to PDF when I posted my last message -- as that was the way I interpreted Ken's statement. On second look, he didn't specify a format but just used the word "images." I am guilty of making an assumption. (Oops!)

I frequently use Preview to downsize jpg, png, etc., files -- leaving them in the same format. Long before Preview was invented, I got in the habit of firing up Graphic Converter for changing formats, still do and, thus, have little experience with what happens when one uses Preview for converting.

[Ken Ozanne]

Re: Digitizing & Importing paper records

Hm-m-m-m! I was speaking only of PDF to PDF when I posted my last message -- as that was the way I interpreted Ken's statement. On second look, he didn't specify a format but just used the word "images." I am guilty of making an assumption. (Oops!)

I frequently use Preview to downsize jpg, png, etc., files -- leaving them in the same format. Long before Preview was invented, I got in the habit of firing up Graphic Converter for changing formats, still do and, thus, have little experience with what happens when one uses Preview for converting.

Bob,
I talked with the Graphic Converter people some years ago, having tried their product. They were the ones who first suggested that I needed to go to Acrobat Pro.

I don't know of a camera that will take photos in pdf format. The microform scanners at FHL will and they are a godsend.

I'll give Preview a go at reducing pdf file sizes. These are frequently used by others for making transcriptions so I can't afford any loss of detail.