[REQUEST] Scanning student transcripts

[LedHed]

Hello all,
I visited a local private school this morning that has been in operation since 1983. They would like to scan all of their student transcripts (2 pages for each student/approximately 20,000 students) in order to make them all digital. They want to do this in-house (the man I spoke to was very clear about that.)

I've been searching online to find a solution but I can only find services that do this. I'm unclear as to how to proceed. Any serious suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I have another client (an animal hospital) that did this a few months ago. They bought a Fujitsu SnapScan for around $500 and it did the job beautifully. Their software (Avimark) already has the functionality to accept these scans, so I really didn't need to do anything other than install/configure the scanner.

Specifically, I need to know the following:
Is the Fujitsu SnapScan up to the task? If not, what would you suggest?
What software is necessary to accept the scans and make them searchable and editable?

Thank you in advance,
Andy

 

[Markverhyden]

A big thing is are they going to want everything OCR'd or will plain PDF's work. I've got a funeral home customer who wanted to go digital with everything. Not only previous customers but new ones as well. Apple environment though. Had him buy a Neat sheet fed scanner and it's been working like a champ for 4 years. But he's not done. Gone back about 15 years but they've been in business since the 50's.

An important part is also the DB program and how they store it. Don't know Avimark but if it's already part of the equation and can accept scanned inputs that's half the battle. Need to make sure you have proper backups, etc. SnapScan is certainly up to the task. See those all of the time in larger environments like banks, hospitals, etc.

 

[LedHed]

Mark,
It's my understanding that plain PDF's will work. I'm sorry if I didn't word it correctly, but Avimark is specifically for Veterinary Clinics, it won't work for the student scans (although I'm sure at least some of them are animals.)

Assuming plain PDF's will be OK, will they be able to edit them? I'm not sure why they would need to do this, but they did ask.

Right now everything is stored in file cabinets. Each file cabinet has everything stored alphabetically, and is for a particular year. I was thinking about setting up folders for each particular year, and then have alphabetical sub-folders within them. All they really want to do is have this info easily searchable when someone needs a transcript printed out.

 

[HCHTech]

If you want the resulting scans to have filenames like "SmithJohnA0592" these would have to be manually entered. I have a scansnap for my business, and rename every scan like this as well as choose the folder it is saved in. This is going to be a huge job.

I think Scansnap's idea is to accept the default filenames and just search for everything you want, but I'm too old to trust that solution.

 

[LedHed]

HCHTech,
I told them it was a big job. They hired a part-timer to complete it, but right now she's only working two days a week! I agree with your suggestion about manually renaming the scans, that will make searching much easier.

 

[Markverhyden]

Unless they do OCR on the scans you really want to rename them. In OS X, when performing a search, it can scan PDF's for matching text but that's not fool proof. Don't think that function is native to M$ but I'm sure there is a plug in.

As far as editing PDF's. In OS X Preview has allowed that for ages. M$ Adobe Reader has limited abilities but Foxit seem to do a pretty good job and is much more economical.

 

[LedHed]

I was considering Foxit. One of my clients used it in the past. It seemed to fill their needs. I'm going to meet with them again next week. I think I have enough information to proceed. Thank you all for your input.

 

[HCHTech]

I have never understood editing PDFs. Why do you want to do that again? Isn't the whole point of PDFs to make a portable, exact copy of the original? Seems to me, especially with records of this type you would want to PREVENT editing, not encourage it...

 

[LedHed]

HCHTech,
I don't know why they want to do that. The man I spoke to said they want the ability to edit the files they scan in. I agree with you about editing these types of files. The only thing I can think of is, maybe they want to be able to correct mistakes.

 

[Markverhyden]

I have never understood editing PDFs. Why do you want to do that again? Isn't the whole point of PDFs to make a portable, exact copy of the original? Seems to me, especially with records of this type you would want to PREVENT editing, not encourage it...

Editing a pdf is no different than any other document. The problem is one needs to understand the context. File metadata lets one know if something has changed. Ideally tracking changes is the best, like what one can do with Office docs.

In my situation I regularly edit pdf's to add information. While low level editors allow changes those change are easily identifiable. They do not allow the granularity that Office does with tracking.