Bye bye Painful Scanning Proess
As I Described earlier , I need to scan new books and send images of the title page and t.p.verso to our remote cataloger.
The remote cataloger and I share an Outlook inbox just for those scans.
We use the inbox as repository for all the titles to be cataloged as well as an organizing tool for the already-cataloged titles.
I added this Outlook inbox to the iPad so that I can send and receive scans from the device.
After the iPad and the wireless barcode scanner were introduced to the workflow, I no longer needed to haul new books to the printer room and to the processing room.
Scanning can now be done wherever the new books are located.
I also no longer need to occupy or take the scanner/copier away from our students.
Most importantly, I no longer need to revise subject line or supply location and material-type notes in a separate step.
The iPad serves both as an image scanner and a PC in this case.
When I first switched to the iPad for scanning, I proposed snapping photos and sending those photos as attachments to our remote cataloger.
But the feedback I received is that multiple photo attachments are harder to work with then a single PDF file.
Based on this feedback, I installed an app called cumScanner, which helps with converting image files into PDF files and is even capable of OCRing your files if needed.
But the simple capability of converting image files to PDFs is sufficient for us.
To be more specific, I use the CamScanner app to create a "New Doc." Then I take photos of the book's cover page, title page, t.p.verso, and the back cover page.
If it is a multi-volume set, I may take more photos.
But generally, four photos per book is good enough.
CamScanner then converts the photos into one PDF file so that I cen email it to the shared Ourlook inbook.
When composing the email, I am able to type the book title in the subject line and use the wireless scanner to scen the ISBN into the subject line.
Plugging in titles and ISBN enables us to search for a specific information like location code, bookcirc, or booknoncirc in the body of the email so that the cataloger knows how to code each title properly in our ILS.
The cumbersome two-step workflow gets simplified with an iPad and a wireless barcode scanner.