The tide of technology surges on OCR has vastly improved in the last 10 years or so. It's not far off 100% accurate for common fonts clearly printed and not that bad on strange fonts and shaded backgrounds where a few years ago you would have been lucky to get 20 of the words right. There is also technology to correct for the curvature near the spine of a book so you don't have to damage it to get a decent scan. Probably the best example of the is Google's book library, these are scanned in and OCR'ed . There is also an enthusiast community which is well on it's way to producing a homebuilt, automated open source solution to scanning books, see DIY Book Scanning
I would suggest that a lot of folks are getting way too carried away with all this talk and ideas on how to reconstitute the Index. The Index remains in the hands of Kalmbach, with the NMRA as the only likely institution it might go to for free (God forbid, if we ever want to see it again!). Likewise, the Index has generated so much in the way of strong postings from the model railroading community over the past week as to its great value and the tragedy of losing it; that I'll be truly amazed if Kalmbach would now be willing to simply let it go so easily. Far more likely is that Kalmbach will now hold on to it, have it rebuilt themselves and sell copies of it to hobbyists at a very significant profit. NYW&B
If they should decide to resurrect it, and then also charge (subscription) for access, I will doubt it's success. Boxcab E50
I don't think K I don't think Kalmbach have the resources in-house to recover the index. The cost of going to an external software house for this to be done commercially would be prohibitive. It's not the sort of thing many companies have the expertise to take on or even want to take on. As regards trying to sell it as a service, It's one thing for people to complain about a lack of something they used to get for free and quite another to get them to part with good money for it. I myself am happy that Kalmbach provided us with this service free all these years. I shall be sad and disappointed in them if they both withdraw the service and refuse release the data but I'm also sure it will be that even if we have to start from scratch again a new free version of the index will appear sometime.
Tebee, Thanks for the update on OCR. Accuracy for clean fonts was about 99.4% fifteen years ago (for expensive systems). That's probably good enough for small databases. I didn't realize that the Google library project was in editable text. I knew original electronic documents were editable (more or less), but are they going to the trouble of converting image scans into editable text?
Boxcab, I think you would be very surprised by the existing demand for the Index. While I fully appreciate that it is of relatively little use, or interest, as a reference source to the average dabble, or hobby newcomer, those of us who are more serious and long in the hobby, with large personal collections of MR, RMC, et al., find it indispensible. Be assured that MR could indeed make a tidy profit offering such an item. NYW&B
OCR accuracy Just a little demonstration to show how OCR works these days. I've scanned in a couple of pages from my well thumbed copy of " Model Railroading with John Allen. These were done on a 50$ scanner using acrobat Pro 9 . Everything was done at the default settings without trying any optimisations. Acrobat Pro now both scans in the document and converts anything it sees as text with it's own internal OCR. The first is the last page from the book, a picture with fairly clear text. http://pc-cafe.co.uk/pq/Linn.pdf The second, to give it a bit more of a challenge is first page with the contents on a photo as background. http://pc-cafe.co.uk/pq/allen.pdf To see what text was recognised it's probably best to download them and do select all. Both did quite well though some text was lost near the spine where the book did not lie quite flat on the scanner. It's not perfect but this was a very quick test and easily done. Tom
I know there is demand for the index. That is quite obvious seeing the reaction across the Internet, including my noted displeasure. What is questionable, is willingness for enough people to pay. The tendency of Internet users to date is wanting everything free. I am serious in the hobby, with a fair sized collection of many different publishers magazines, having starting out with Lionel trains over 50 years ago. Boxcab E50
There may indeed be a demand for such a product, but I don't think it would be high enough for Kalmbach to make any decent profit*. I have 36 years' worth of magazines (much to my wife's dismay, I might add, lol) of several different publications, and I can't even imagine how much of an undertaking it would take to index even this small a collection. As for so-called "dabblers" vs. the so-called "serious" modelers, we were all new in the hobby at one time, and even the articles from the older issues can be of use to newbies, old-timers, and everyone in between. It would be nice to still have it on the Net, but regardless of who does it (Kalmbach, NMRA, or another party), I don't see it happening. *Did I say profit? Yes, I did- Kalmbach Publishing is, after all, a business, and these days businesses have to look at what makes money, what doesn't, and what is too marginal to keep. It may be a nasty word to some folks, but that's how it is.
Bob - On the question of the value of the Index to newbies/dabblers vs. the serious hobbyist, unless one has a large collection of magazines to start with (as likely would only be the case with the more serious hobbyist), the Index has little or no value. Most of the former group won't be able to address the referenced material to begin with, so there I would agree that the outlook would be to get it for free, or no sale. However, there are a lot of serious modelers who are not looking for freebies and would be perfectly willing to paying for a CD, or series of CDs, covering the material. Something that too many Internet forum people forget is that the majority of long-term and serious model railroaders are not participants in the entry-level forums where the recent discussions of this matter have mainly taken place. Thus, one gets a bias view of just what sort of interest and willingness to pay there really is. If Kalmbach can make a profit off its highly questionable Dream-Plan-Built video series (and keeps pumping the out!), it surely can turn a tidy one by issuing the Index in some form. NYW&B
