Large-Scale Paper-To-Digital Conversion?

An anonymous reader writes "I've just been asked to digitize several dozen sets of lecture outlines at the university where I work. Basically, professors want to hand me a big (often 100+ page) stack of their handwritten lecture notes (with messy text, equations, and diagrams; sometimes double-sided) and expect me to post a PDF-or-something-similar to their course's web page. However, every desktop scanner I've ever used takes 1-2 minutes of user-attention per page and the resulting files end up Huge, impossible-to-read, or both. All I have at my disposal is my PowerBook, Acrobat, a couple hundred dollars of department funds for a new scanner (this maybe?), and, if I ask nicely, overnight use of the secretary's Win2k box. Any ideas? Sheet-fed scanner recommendations? Better file formats than PDF (or better PDF settings)? Do any of you students have usability advice?"

Comments

You must not have looked too hard.

[turbomonkey2k]

Your research skills astound me in their nonexistence. If you are typical of today's college student, then I fear not for my job security. For less than $100 you can get a Lexmark(x125) at freakin Office Depot that will sheetfeed scan as well as color print and fax.

Now you're lazy but, I'm smart and lazy so I'd just go to Kinkos, give them the stack to process and present the receipt to the professor for reimbursement. I would also be surprised if your school doesn't already have the facilities to perform your needed task.

One of the things you will learn in your life is that usually your problem has already been solved multiple times by multiple people, and the least bit of effort on the internet will generally provide myriad examples of these solutions. Though, I can't believe this problem actually made it to slashdot. Must be a slow news day.