Anybody familiar with Pagekeeper?

[Sheryl Dwinell]

We're staring a project to put up on our Web site somewhere around 1600
pages of finding aids to our University Archives.  Some of these pages are
in Word. However, the vast majority were done back in the days before
computers, and were typed by hand onto standard 8 1/2 X 11 sheets of paper
and put into binders.  When we got computers, the library purchased
Pagekeeper and the Archives personnel scanned all the pages into
Pagekeeper, using Pagekeeper as a sort of searchable database of the pages.
 Well, the idea is to make the pages of finding aids available on the Web
and make them searchable. Once the pages are in HTML, the searching part is
a breeze. However, the version of Pagekeeper (2.0, is what I was told) we
have doesn't convert files to HTML.  In fact, the files it converts into
Word, WP, or straight ASCII look horrible, i.e. need lots of manual
manipulation to make them look halfway decent. So, my first question is:
Does anyone have any experience converting files from Pagekeeper,
particularly converting them into HTML? Is there a version of Pagekeeper
that does this?

I think the easiest solution is to rescan the pages and convert them to
HTML using existing software over at our ITS department. Another 'problem'
is that these pages have all sorts of indents and tabbing, so they look
spiffy on the page. However, this is going to be a layout nightmare in HTML
using standard tags.  My thought is to just format each page with the <pre>
tag, causing the pages to look like they do already (Courier) and avoid the
layout headaches.  No one relishes the prospect of tweaking 1600 plus pages
of text.

I also thought about converting the files to .pdf, but I've never done
this, so there'd be a steep learning curve. Plus, there seems to be
resistance to forcing patrons download Acrobat to read the files.

Anyway, this is the first time I've done this sort of project.  If anyone
has tackled something similar and wants to pass along some words of wisdom,
I'd appreciate it greatly!

Sheryl Dwinell
Cataloger/Database Management Librarian/Webmaster
Memorial Library * Marquette University
P.O. Box 3141 * Milwaukee, WI 53201-3141
414-288-3542 * dwinells at vms.csd.mu.edu