01 April 2008

OCR searches in Footnote


The newspapers at Footnote.com are searchable using OCR technology. The nice thing about the Footnote.com search results is that the highlighted text is shown (at least for some) in the results screen without requiring the entire image to be loaded.
I always search for Ufkes just to see what I find, it is one of the nice things about having an usual last name. In this case, the word "offices" came up, but one can see how an automatic search might recognize this as "ufkes." The nice thing is I can "preview" the page before waiting for the entire thing to load.
The London Times is one set of newpapers on Footnote.com that came from the Allen County Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.