Have Your Documents Scanned the Easy Way

I have a four drawer filing cabinet that is mostly full of paper. Two drawers are full of genealogy documents: a mixture of my handwritten notes and of photocopies, all of them made years ago. I now scan electronically and transcribe onto a computer; I no longer collect paper. However, there must be several thousand sheets of paper in that filing cabinet that I made in "the old days" before I started computerizing.

I really need to scan those documents, get them into a proper genealogy database, and then file and organize them properly. The longer I procrastinate, the bigger the problem. I don't dig into that filing cabinet often but the last time that I did I noticed that many of the photocopies are fading. Some are already difficult to read and the problem will become worse the longer I procrastinate.

In reality, a bigger problem is the simple inconvenience: trying to dig through old papers is much more difficult than typing a keyword on a computer and having the proper document image pop up on the screen a second or two later.

Whatever the reason, I am not using the old paper documents any longer and they are deteriorating. I really need to scan them. However, there always seems to be "one more thing" that is more urgent and demanding my attention. The papers remain unscanned and fading.

Probably the best idea is to hire someone to scan them for me. The problem is finding such a person: I don't have grandchildren and I don't know any youngster in the neighborhood willing to do the task. Maybe I could find a college student...

Luckily, there are commercial scanning services available. They are not cheap, but they certainly are willing to do the job. Most of them wish to deal with corporations that have tens of thousands of pages to scan, such as insurance companies or hospitals. I don't have enough documents to scan to even appear on their "radar screens." My two drawers of paper may seem to be a huge problem for me but is miniscule compared to the customers the commercial scanners wish to attract. I suspect most of these companies will also want a minimum charge that is higher than what my budget allows. However, this week I found one company that solicits small scale work from private individuals.

Pixily is in the business of scanning documents and then placing them on a secure and private web site that requires a user name and password for access. You can leave the documents online where you can access them at any time or you can easily download them and store them on your own hard drive. You can even do both: download them and simultaneously leave an online copy for backup purposes. The documents are yours and you are in control of the disposition of each document.

The company accepts work of 50 pages at a time; each collection of 50 or more pages is a "batch." You can send in as many or as few "batches" as you wish and you are charged accordingly. The more documents you send per month, the cheaper the pricing on a per-document basis. However, the prices are not cheap: prices vary from $14.95 for a single batch per month to $59.95 for four batches per month. The higher the monthly fee, the more pages may be stored online, up to 12,000 pages (that would be many months' of scanning). Those prices include the cost of postage in both directions: sending in the documents as well as the return postage of processed documents. All paper documents are mailed back to you after they have been processed.

At any time you may increase the online storage by 100 pages for an additional 15¢ per month. You can also mail in additional sheets of paper to be scanned at any time for 12¢ per sheet.

Pixily does not care what kind documents you send. You can send photocopies of old records, hand written notes, tax records, photocopies of old books, grocery receipts, medical records, or most anything else up to 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches. Pixily is not equipped for oversized documents. I also would never send any delicate documents to the company; the scanning process is heavily automated and  anything that is delicate may not get handled with the care and attention that I would want. However, the service should work well for most regular documents.

Pixily also accepts digital documents: you may already have PDF files or word processing documents or even screenshots of web sites that you want to store. You can upload the digital files to Pixily's servers and have the files stored there for backup purposes. Again, you can access those files at any time in the future from any computer that has an Internet connection. All you need is the proper user name and password.

Scanning my two drawers' of documents will cost quite a bit of money. Then again, it might actually get done, something that is not happening now. Pixily is also a great tool if you want to scan the various receipts that you collect for tax purposes; you can have everything stored digitally and organized by keywords (that you create) for instant retrieval as needed.

For more information about Pixily or to check out the company's free trial, go to http://www.pixily.com.

Now is the time to get digitized and go completely paperless.

Comments

[Bonnie]

Wow, at those prices, this kind of scanner might be worth it, depending on how many documents you need to scan.

http://www.amazon.com/ScanSnap-S510M-Instant-Sheet-Fed-Scanner/dp/B000WJCX18?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1201005626&sr=1-1

I've been looking at this for quite a while, but felt I couldn't justify the cost.

[Colin C.]

Bonnie, I have one of the Scansnap units, the one that works with a Mac. I have to say its a very user friendly device to scan documents with. The only thing that sometimes frustrates me is the OCR software it comes with. Some of my father's microfilm copies don't OCR well at all. But it does a great job of creating my documents into PDF files or saved as just scanned images.

[Dae Powell]

Seems cheaper to do a single batch than a combined quadruple batch. OK you only save fifteen cents, but every little bit hurts. My HP scanner was worth it, considering THESE prices!

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Sue Wilson]

I have a Brother Scan/Copy/Fax machine that was $200 or less several years ago. It has a sheet feeder that works quite well. The OCR didn't work too well with a wrinkled newspaper copy, but has worked well with documents that are relatively new.

[clare]

Just got a Neat Receipts scanner off of Ebay. Its great. Scans and then sorts into folders. Its tiny and portable. Take it anywhere. Can handle small receipts, business cards and documents up to 8.5 X 11. I'm loving it.

[Kenneth Lary]

The pricing doesn't make a lot of sense. Prices should go down with volume since fixed costs would be spread over more pages, but as one person already noted it's cheaper to do a batch at a time, instead of the four batches. Well, it's cheaper to do a page at a time. Fifty pages at twelve cents a page is only six dollars - less than half the price of a fifty page batch. Just send in forty-nine pages at a time.

[Linda]

Bonnie,

I'm sure Pixily works for some people but I also cringe at the cost of it when scanners are so cheap these days. If you don't have one, get a scanner with both a paper feeder and a flatbed to handle the fragile documents as well as the stacks of paper. Scanning software allows your to put in a partial file name and will add a sequence number in the order of scanning. Quite frankly, it is organizing the items to scan and the organizing of the scanned files that takes lots more time than the scanning part. Tackle a chunk at a time. Put a stack into a small file box and sort through even before scanning. A lot of the things we collect at the beginning of our genealogy hobbies are related to wild theories that we have since disproven. You may also recognize items that you have already scanned or transcribed. Scan using the feeder function when possible, backup the set of files and purge that box. To avoid being as overwhelmed by scanned files that just have sequence numbers, I would also go through them, rename and electronically file them more appropriately. After you see that first file box go, you probably will get the motivation to tackle the next. It's the getting started part that is the hardest:)

[Lynn]

I got Neat Receipts for business purposes but earlier this year I went to a family reunion and I decided to bring it along with my laptop. Other people had brought pictures, newspaper clipping and other documents. I scanned those documents into my computer even the pictures. It worked wonderfully. The pictures had to be thin because of the scanner limitations. But for the thin pictures it work great. Since the reunion was held in an area where there is no photo scanners at the drug store this worked well.

Of course I would not want to do a drawer full of papers with Neat Receipts! That would take a long time since each sheet is individually feed.

[Lorenzo]

As I am in charge of digitizing at our library, I can offer these observations:

Be sure you keep the paper copy for WHEN, not if, the digitized version is no longer accessible or readable; keep a local copy (we use CDs and DVDs, multiple times; keep an off site copy (we back up onto digital tapes); and keep an online version.

Personally, I have a small mountain of items to digitize for my own genealogy research. When I retire (yeah, sure), I will scan them using the HP scanner that I have now, and keep copies on a disk and online somewhere. I plan to put the actual paper into "cold storage" or give it to the library where I work.

[Robert G]

I only scan pictures. I personally have begun imaging all my paper data by taking pictures with my digital camera (7 megapixel). I favor this as the clarity of the image is far better than scanned images when blown up to read on the computer. It also is far faster than scanning. So far I have imaged over 8 gig of paper. I have folders by surname and with classifications just like my original binders so everything can be found. For me this works. Oh, and the cost? Just for 3 external hard drives and some DVDs.

[Ruth]

How does the NeatReceipts compare to the DocuPen RC800?

I'm looking for the best way to have something with me when I am away from home at library, relative's house, etc. and want to scan something -- such as pages of a book, or pictures & newspaper clippings that are in an album. I have been taking pics of such items with my digital camera - maybe that is still the best way.

Not to mention the hundreds of loose photos at home in the shoeboxes!!

Comments anyone?

[Marilyn]

Is it really necessary to keep all that paper? So many of the older books are on-line now, you almost don't need to keep copies of those pages anymore. Once you've cited a certain book in a work, you've got a record of it. Is this heresy? I can see saving probates, deeds, etc.

[sue maxwell]

There is a company called Acentra, which is reasonably priced. They digitize everything for you, put them on a very high tech disc that holds ten times what a dvd holds; they keep a disc and you have one, or however many it takes, and upgrade them with the technology upgrades; they digitized the entire Godfrey Library so they can make their records available to the public- also the DAR. You get so many points, like 37,000, and they will come into your home for a small fee if something is too valuable for them to come pick them up and take them to their office. They have several offices around but am not sure where. I bought the thrree year plan and that gives me time to sort out what I really need copied. Sue

[Kristina]

DocuPen
i have the docupen and love it! It is best for use at a library or court house where you want to copy a specific page and the title page, similarly to using the copy machine at the library for a few pages. It works quite well and scans directly to your computer. I would always have my computer there to be sure it scanned accurately because sometimes you may need to do it more than once to get the best scan.
It eliminates the need to scan the copy when you get home. I would not use it to do batch scanning, that would take forever. i would also not use it for old photos as it needs the page to be flat to get a good scan, an old photo with curling edges would not scan well with the docupen.
It is quite pricey, you would have to make a lot of copies to recoup the cost. Fortunately, it was a gift.

[Elyse]

Honestly, I wish I had the patience to do my own scanning. I really have to get on it because I have stack after stack of old pictures and documents that are in desperate need of attention. But then there are always more FUN things in genealogy (and in life)to do than scanning old documents, isn't there?

[Rose Mary]

If you are deciding to scan all papers and photos to disk, be sure to scan in tif format and to use the best of disks as recommended by our local newspaper computer guru. He recommends the Gold Preservation DVDs from KMP Media. They claim 80-100 years of shelf life and "they seem to have the science to back up that claim." They are more expensive but what are your photos and documents worth? Cheaper DVDs, unfortunately, have a relatively short shelf life.

[Lynn]

Ruth,

Neat Receipts will not scan pages in a book. You would have to take apart the book and scan each page into the scanner. I think the library or court house would frown on that. I also don't think you want to feed an album page through their scanner. It would probably get stuck. Neat receipts is good for loose papers, loose newspaper clippings, and thin pictures. You will have to take your laptop with you.

To see it in action visit www.neatreceipts.com

[Lorenzo]

Sometimes it is necessary to keep all that old paper. As a de facto clearinghouse worldwide for the names I am researching, I get emails (these days!) from all over asking about a connection. A lot of the far flung extraction work that I have done is on...old sheets of paper. It's easier for me that way. I know, I should type it into a genealogy program, but I work way too much to do that. Maybe after retirement...!

[Dick Eastman]

---> Sometimes it is necessary to keep all that old paper.

What do I do about the hundreds of sheets of photocopies that have already faded badly? If I wait a few more years, they will be unreadable. That is the basic problem that triggered this article.

- Dick Eastman

[Drew]

I recently converted all my paper genealogy documents to BOTH TIFF and PDF. Over the course of a few months, I took the documents to work and scanned them with the Xerox copy/scanner during lunch. It has a feature where it scans the document and emails it to my email address. I scanned it as a TIFF so I could (if I wanted to) OCR it using Microsoft Office Document Imaging. I used PDF Creator to create a copy of the document as a PDF. I then uploaded the PDF's to both Scribd and Slideshare for storing and sharing. After each document was uploaded, and both the TIFF and PDF were copied to my USB drive, I dumped it in the paper recycling bin - it was all just photocopies anyway. I then burned a backup on a DVD. Total cost - VERY CHEAP - mostly my time with loosing about 30 minutes of my lunch hour to the effort every other day. The people I work with thought it was all kind of funny, but it is nice not having boxes of paper sitting in the garage anymore.

[Concetta]

Dick,

My library has a copier that does scanning via feeder to PDF. The charge for the service is minimal - maybe that's something to look into?

My work also has a copier with the scan to PDF function. I've used that for many of my papers (although I just keep finding more! :-( ) and since that is free for them, they allow employees to do as many scans as they like.

At the last meter count, over 500,000 sheets had been scanned, but only 100,000 had been printed!

As long as you're not interrupting their main business hours, I would find a friend with a decent copier model and ask if you can spend some time with them and their copier!

[Holly Hendricks]

I think electronic is the way to go, and I'm committed to using less paper, but as a librarian I am concerned about organization and access. If everything is full-text searchable, one will get thousands of useless hits on common names and phrases. If we tag items based on our interests of the moment, will we ever find them again? Professional digitization projects use standards like Dublin Core, but even with standards, filling in fields to describe digital objects can vary widely.

At the same time, one has to put a piece of paper in a folder, and in that sense, commit to some kind of system. But some of my best serendipitous finds have come from cleaning out one of those folders and finding gems applicable to a new or different interest.

The eternal dilemma in librarianship is access vs. preservation. Standard systems, however imperfect, give professionals a place to start. I would like to see more easy-to-adopt standards systems for individuals and families, especially when I think of inheriting someone's electronic genealogy filing system. In the short term, good keywords systems might help.

[Robert Larry Akin]

I also scan my own documents. I bought a scanner/printer/FAX machine with an automatic document feeder (ADF) that makes volume scanning painless (about 20 pages a batch). If the document is typed, I then save the document as a PDF Searchable Image (contains both the image and the OCRed text). I store the image on my hard drive in a hierarchy of files managed with Paperport and I back up these files online at Mozy.com (see Dick's blog about Mozy) each day, and on DVD's each month. I then use X1 from Yahoo for a desktop search system. It indexes every document on my hard drive in the background. When I want to find information on a subject, I bring up X1, type in the key words, and a list of all documents with that key word comes up.

I discard all of the old paper documents that I have scanned except for the "original sources" and historical documents. All notes, letters, web images, etc. get tossed which greatly reduces my paper files.

Comments?

[Robert Larry Akin]

I also scan my own documents. I bought a scanner/printer/FAX machine with an automatic document feeder (ADF) that makes volume scanning painless (about 20 pages a batch). If the document is typed, I then save the document as a PDF Searchable Image (contains both the image and the OCRed text). I store the image on my hard drive in a hierarchy of files managed with Paperport and I back up these files online at Mozy.com (see Dick's blog about Mozy) each day, and on DVD's each month. I then use X1 from Yahoo for a desktop search system. It indexes every document on my hard drive in the background. When I want to find information on a subject, I bring up X1, type in the key words, and a list of all documents with that key word comes up.

I discard all of the old paper documents that I have scanned except for the "original sources" and historical documents. All notes, letters, web images, etc. get tossed which greatly reduces my paper files.

Comments?