AHG Day #2 - AHEAD eText "Production Techniques"

Before we begin today's class - we are going to make sure our workspace is nice and clean. Now that we can see what we are doing, turn your attention to the front of the room and listen to Gaeir [those of you checking eMail when you should be paying attention should beware of Ron patrolling the perimeter - ]

Important hi-lights of the day [not included in the handouts]:

• Just because you get a book in electronic format [from a publisher] does not mean it is accessible eText. This is especially true of Quark, PageMaker, InDesign, etc. (but your campus publications can probably translate it to something useable - bring them cookies)
• .pdf was originally meant to be a transportable format between platforms. Over time we have asked [forced] it to do things it was not designed to do.
• Dots Per Inch [DPI] - like lawn fertilizer - more is not necessarily better!
• Hire graphic arts students to do your scanning - they are probably already familiar with scanners and scanning procedures].
• Clean your scanners! Every 3k-5k pages. Paper is dirty and binding glue is nasty stuff!
• Dryer sheets work wonders to reduce scanner static that leads to jams. Small room humidifiers running in the lab are also an option.
• After removing spines - separate the pages into piles one at a time by a good 6+ inches.
• Again - binding glue is tuff stuff.
• Watch your name lengths when creating folders & files. 23 characters seems to be the limit and names may be truncated when being moved from workstation to server and back.
• Use the native software that came with the scanner for .tiff's. This software and the scanner have been designed to work together.
• When checking .tiff - make use of the Windows Imaging Software that comes as part of
• Windows-XP. DO NOT, however, use this program for OCR.
• The better your scan-job :: the less time you will have to spend editing.
• DO NOT use the Wizards in Abbyy [especially in v.8]

Words of wisdom from Ron regarding a software crash - "Ahhh technology -95% of the time it works fine - and the other 5% of the time you try to run a workshop ..."
Save Everything! Gaeir says "storage space is cheap - my time is not!"

P.S. - Breakfast at the hotel buffet and lunch back at The Buff - as I post this I am at the hotel bar with a few folks [who may not wish to have such information posted on-line] and waiting to head out for dinner.