After a few false starts I am up and running with a copy of FineReader Pro 10, which I am using to scan full issues of The Etude Music Magazine and convert them to text. FineReader is by far the best OCR software I have yet used, though my experience is relatively limited. Until now I had mostly used the built-in OCR funcitonality of Windows Scanning software, a program of limited functionality which nevertheless fit the bill for my initial plan: to scan an article or two a week and convert them to text. The more I did this, though, the more interesting it became to me, and I realized that if I am going to do this at all I might as well pull out the stops and do it the best I can.
My plan remains essentially the same: to scan and share content related to piano music, pianists, composers, and the general world of music, including commentary and extra links to try and bring this 100+ year old content up to date. I maintain an abiding interest in the more ephemeral portions of content from these magazines, including the various departments of short items which I group under the "World of Music." I do not expect to make complete issues of The Etude available at this time but nothing should stop me from doing so, and I have changed my mind about this project several times already. I do not expect to make the section of sheet music available at this time. The reason for this is that I simply do not find that material to be very interesting, and I shall save myself the time of scanning it.
This is a personal endeavor I have desired to do for years now, as my large collection of Etude Magazines has moldered away on my shelves. This week I took an additional measure of buying plastic polybags for storage of the magazines, because I find that the more I handle some of these magazines the more rapidly they fall to shreds, and falling-out pages and such make shelving in my available space hazardous to the integrity of the magazines.
