Hi, Reinhard-
I use Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI), a tool that used to come with the Windows version of Microsoft Office (and is now available for free download). I checked to see if a similar tool is available for Mac - this page says there isn't, but suggests some alternatives. MODI is the best OCR tool I've seen, and it's free. Other OCR programs try to do to much and attempt to copy format. This often results in total failure. If all you want to do is copy text, MODI will do the trick for you.

MODI does a great job of OCR, although you still have to proof everything is you want perfect copy. To OCR Reinhard's scan, I highlighted the image and right-clicked and selected "copy." Then I went to MODI and selected "paste page." Then I highlighted the portion I wanted to copy, and the program OCR'd the text. Then I went to the Mudcat window and pasted the text into the message box. Then I proofed the text, and then hit "submit."

I copied each column of the text as a separate image, and pasted all the columns into MODI before I did the OCR. Sometimes, doing OCR on multiple columns can be problematic.

Sometimes, I can't get documents to OCR in proper order, and the words get scrambled all over the place. This happens quite often with stuff I get from Bodleian Ballads. When that happens, I often end up typing the text.

If there are other album notes from Bert Lloyd, let's post them here, and then I'll rename the thread appropriately. These notes are so good that we need to preserve them, and there seems to be no way to access the notes nowadays unless you buy the recording on CD (I switched to MP3 long ago). If the OCR discussion gets in the way, I'll move it to another thread.

-Joe-