[Athen] Alt format production question

[Jean Salzer]

Hi everyone, 

I had to funnel through a few of these to see what the original questions were! 

I have a question that maybe you can all help me with, what percentage
of your e-text production comes from a PDF source file?  

Most of the files we received from publishers have been word or text files. We don't receive much from publishers, because we often find that even though we make the request 2 weeks before a semester begins, we don't hear anything until 3-4 weeks after and by then, we've scanned it. For the publishers we do receive prompt attention from, they've been good about providing it in the manner the student requests. I have 1 student in particular who requests PDF, so all of his is in that manner. 

One thing we've dealt plenty with is electronic reserve files. Our library scans somewhere in the realm of 20,000 documents each semester and they don't have time to do OCR (although they do have the capability) on them all, so we will open up the PDF in ABBYY, do the OCR and any necessary cleanup, then either resave as PDF or something more text-based (depending on the student need). 

It would also be helpful to know what quantity of books you are doing on an average is as well.

We are still using RFBD whenever possible, so we have about 30 books from them, we scanned about 90 this fall, we received 10 or so from publishers, used about 25 from our files, and purchased audio from amazon (for novels) for about 10. Spring will be less if history is any indicator.

PS - Susan - For the majority of students I work with, OCR'd PDF files 
don't need to be tagged. We do cleanup in the same way as with 
everything else, then send them a PDF. It includes all the graphics, but 
all the student hears is the body of the text, and/or anything else we 
might have included. The student can then open the PDF and click on the 
Read button. Whatever the default voice is, it will commence to read 
while still in Adobe. For a blind student, we'd obviously do the 
tagging, but then most of my blind students prefer a word doc with 
graphic description. Jean




Kelmer, Susan M. wrote:


>>The quality and flexibility of PDF makes it the best, in my 

>>humble opinion.  I can run it through ABBYY or Kurzweil.  I 

>>can also use it as is for those students who can use Adobe Reader.

>>    

>>




>You actually have time to take text or scanned documents and make tagged

>PDF's out of them?  I'm jealous...I have no time for such luxuries, there is

>too much work involved to code them properly and I have to get books turned

>around too quickly.  If I had two semesters to do one semester's worth of

>books, I might be able to do it!

>

>Susan Kelmer

>Coordinator

>Information ACCESS Lab

>St. Louis Community College at Meramec

>314/984-7951

> 

>

>_______________________________________________

>Athen mailing list

>Athen at athenpro.org

>http://athenpro.org/mailman/listinfo/athen_athenpro.org

>

>  

>

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: jeano.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 284 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20061128/6833833c/attachment.vcf>