[Web4lib] Digitization of tables to spreadsheet

[John Fereira]

At 04:40 PM 2/9/2006, Thomas Edelblute wrote:
>Can you export the table into a comma delimited file?  If so, I think
>that the information should be importable into Excel.

When I saw tables my first thought was database tables but on second 
reading the OP is talking about printed tables and is likely is 
looking for some sort of OCR software that can recognized graphical 
delimiters as well as character data.

I'd be interested to hear what he comes up with as well.  One of the 
projects I'm working on involves scanning thousands of government 
documents from a US federal agency (some going back to 1919) and 
since a good portion of the content is made up of many tables of 
numbers that most OCR engines would have difficulty parsing the 
document are likely only be made available as PDF documenents made up 
of a collection of tiff images.



>Thomas Edelblute
>Anaheim Public Library
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
>[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Balfour, Regan
>Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 9:43 AM
>To: web4lib at webjunction.org
>Subject: [Web4lib] Digitization of tables to spreadsheet
>
>Hello,
>
>
>
>If I want to digitize tables of data into a spreadsheet, what would be
>the best software to purchase?
>
>Specifically, this is a box of legal-sized paper of with weather data
>tables.
>
>It would be nice to be able to set a template, scan and display in a
>spreadsheet.
>
>I did a quick web search and came up with a few possibilities, but I
>thought maybe someone on this list would have some suggestions.
>
>Thanks very much.
>
>
>
>Regan Balfour
>
>Public Services Librarian
>
>Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST)
>
>1100 15th St E
>
>Prince Albert, SK S6V 6G1
>
>Phone: 306.953.7107
>
>Fax: 306.953.7064
>
>Email: balfourr at siast.sk.ca
>
>
>
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John Fereira
jaf30 at cornell.edu
Ithaca, NY