Forgive us while we step out of second person.
I'm writing about my holiday wish list: there's only one thing on it, and it's less paper. Blogging is relatively low on the paper scale (though I do keep a healthy supply of magazines and catalogs around for inspiration), but my other job, being a PhD student in Architecture, generates a steady stream of xeroxed articles, summaries, and chapters. Add to that the bills and all other junk of everyday life, and it's a real challenge to stay out from under the avalanche. I've got two five-drawer filing cabinets, and they're both almost full. Considering that I've barely started my academic career, that doesn't bode well for the future.
But thanks to this little wonder of modern technology, I'm thinking I can ditch the file cabinets.
The Fujitsu ScanSnap scans both sides of a piece of paper, imports it to PDF, and then performs optical character recognition on it so that you can search within the document... and it handles up to 16 pieces of paper a minute.
That means, following these instructions, with a few afternoons of committed work, I could eliminate 90% of my files... and then be able to actually find things quickly when I need them. (Not to mention that I'll be able to find them anywhere I have access to my laptop.)
So, how is this green? Well, it's 12 square feet of my space freed up for a better use, and less clutter all around. Plus, research has shown that the dust and chemicals associated with large amounts of stored paper has a significant impact on indoor air quality.
The ScanSnap runs $400-$600, depending on where you purchase it and whether you get the Macintosh version. (Want to make my day? It's $586 at Amazon.)
I know this is seriously geeky, but I'm excited about this. Have you made the plunge? What's life without paper been like for you?
Not geeky. I'm totally into it, and have researched scanners that handle photos as well so i can just archive everything. Problem is, if you want to use the optical character recognition feature (a major reason for scanning in the first place) you might as well go out and buy a 80GB hard drive for all your files alone. I don't remember how big each page scanned with OCR is, but i remember it being big enough that i would never realistically use it. Good for marketing and getting you to buy, not so useful in real life.
view mh330's profile
Could this be a way to deal with the problem of the kid's artwork? The boy is only 4 and everyday he produces another stack of masterpieces. But who am I kidding, right? Assuming I ever really got around to scanning them and... what, burning them onto a cd I guess?... would anyone ever really look at them again?
view mjoe's profile
I don't understand, if the OCR is good then each file _should_ be just a bunch of text. Meaning that it could/should be smaller than the image pdfs. ??? I'm confused.
And if its a straight text document shouldn't you be able to just save it as a text file?
view juice2's profile
Hmmmm, also a PhD student and I'm sitting at a table with piles and piles of articles and I hate it. On the one hand, I like being able to read articles on paper because I use post-it notes like crazy to mark important things but I could reform. And, really, only about 25% of the articles I read really matter.
But I guess this only solves the problem of having piles of paper around--you're still initially generating the paper, right?
view classiccook's profile
I have this! It's the greatest thing ever!
I just finished my PhD and had scanned in or downloaded all the papers I needed for my dissertation. The beauty was with the OCR I could search for keywords from all 300 papers I had collected and pull out the ones that were the most appropriate for the section I was working on. I refound many papers that were perfect, but I had forgotten about because I had read them years ago. A lifesaver no doubt.
I also use it for work and personal stuff where I have to have copies of medical bills, travel, everything else, for reimbursements, record keeping, etc.
File size wise -- I just scanned a 21 page proposal that had colored paper, text, and a couple of pictures. It is 1.2mb and took less than a minute to scan in.
I still have lots of paper -- it didn't get rid of it all.
view rangerd's profile
My understanding is that the OCR doesn't just convert everything to text, making it a tiny text file, but rather makes it a searchable pdf, so that you have a "photocopy" of the original document with the added feature of being able to search the text. The fact that its a "photocopy", though, makes the file size big. bspong managed to get it down to a good file size, though, so i guess its totally do-able! I remembered hearing it was more to the tune of 1.5MB per PAGE, but i guess not.
view mh330's profile
Methinks Cal is getting too generous with grad student funding if y'all can afford to photocopy everything rather than taking notes. ;-)
It's more green to copy only the articles that have long stretches of valuable content and take notes on the rest, particularly the articles whose existence you have to mention in a lit review but whose content contributes nothing to your argument. You spend more time in the library, but you waste a lot less paper and money, plus you have to think through your research plan while you're taking notes.
Where possible, get your journal articles in their online form and don't print them at all (an option that wasn't around when I was doing my Ph.D.).
view wende in the twin cities's profile