How to get paper doc online without source files?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Olivia wonders: <<My company has  a large number of existing paper documents
(some are manuals) that need to be available on the internal web site.  The
original  computer source files are no longer available or cannot be
located.
What would be the best way(s) to get these paper docs online as HTML pages?
Can they be scanned and then read by some software?>>

You can certainly scan the documents with a variety of OCR software (e.g.,
OmniPage), then edit the converted files to correct the inevitable typos;
the full Acrobat package also lets you scan in documents and convert them
into editable files, but I don't know how well its OCR abilities compare
with dedicated software such as OmniPage. However, scanning the documents
manually is a long job, particularly if you don't have a fast scanner with a
large document feeder; it might be worthwhile checking your Yellow Pages for
service bureaus that provide scanning and OCR as a service. (Your printer
may be able to recommend someone.)

One note, however: On the assumption that the source files have been lost
because the documents are old, you should seriously consider manually
recreating the paper documents. First, many of them are likely to be out of
date to a greater or lesser degree, and thus in need of revision. Second,
documents that work perfectly well on paper often work poorly onscreen, so
some reformatting and rethinking of the contents is likely to be in order.
Whether or not the documents are old, you should also figure out a way to
avoid this problem in future by creating a document archives in which you
store both the printed copies and an electronic version.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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