I just received a very large document from WMATA: The original 2003 contract with Cubic for Smartrip upgrades. Unfortunately, it's about 300 pages and all in paper. I have a flatbed scanner but there's no way I'm going to be able to scan the pages to PDF by hand in any reasonable amount of time.
Are there any readers out there who have access to a high-speed scanner that will scan to PDF or some other decent format? I would be forever grateful, and you would be able to examine the document first-hand. I guess that's a plus for some people.
Alternatively, if anyone knows of a service that will scan large documents to PDF, I could pass the hat around here and get the fee together through donations.
WMATA declined to provide the document electronically because it had been redacted by hand using a black marker.
I'll write up an article about the document, but I did want to be able to share it with you all so you can see what I'm talking about.
4 comments:
Arrange first thirty pages on floor.
Light well.
Take high-resolution camera.
Tweak settings for longish exposure.
Find tripod that lets you look downward.
Snap ten times or so in different positions
Use one of the many panorama stiching utilities out there.
Chop up resulting mega-image
Repeat 10x
Result: Done in 2-3 hours
Alternately: Travel to Kinkos, ask for high-speed scanning, leave an hour later out ten bucks
Seriously - Kinkos will scan to file.
Blech, called Kinkos and asked about high speed scanning. They wanted a dollar per page, or 50 cents per page if you bring your own flash drive. I'm interested in posting this document online, but I don't think I'm willing to pay more than a hundred bucks to scan it.
Minh has a sheet-fed scanner up in Killeen that works without too much hand-holding. We're not going to be back here for two weeks, though. Email me if you can't find any better options and I'll let you know where to mail the docs.
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