janger
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Scanning some books - interested?
Hey guys, I haven't been active here much. But I log in from time to time when in need of some interesting information etc. 
Anyway, I'm doing some scanning of my "bibles" and other interesting books before they fall apart and thought I should give something back for the
help this site has been to me.
It will take me a while, but I'm currently scanning "Mellor's Modern Inorganic Chemistry, Revised Ed, 1961", as well as some interesting early 20th
Century books on electrochemical syntheses of organic compounds (can't remember the exact titles).
So if anyone is interested in this sort of stuff I'll try and get it done quicker. But I need to know where to upload.
EDIT: Oh, I haven't used Finereader much before and can't work out how to get it to recognize Greek symbols and stuff. Can anyone help?
[Edited on 5-6-08 by janger]
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
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I'm certainly interested. I imagine that others are too. How old are the electrochemistry books? I would make sure that Google Books, the Open Content
Alliance, or some other digitization project hasn't already scanned them if they are from the 1920s or earlier.
Finereader will not do a great job of recognizing Greek symbols. I don't know if any software will. OCR will always get tripped up on Greek, chemical
formulas, and mathematical notation. As long as the main body text is recognized well enough to make the document searchable, it's not a big problem.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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The_Davster
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| Quote: | Originally posted by janger
early 20th Century books on electrochemical syntheses of organic compounds (can't remember the exact titles).
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Oh my yes am I interested!
If you could provide titles and exact years I will be happy!
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janger
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Yeah, it looks like a couple of the books I have are available already. I have several in storage though so I'll check them when I pick em up.
As for OCR'ing symbols, I got FR8 to do it a while ago but can't remember how. Something with the training or adding my own symbol library.
BTW, I tried out Omnipage 16 this morning and it seems much more accurate with the pages I tested. But I don't like how it will only save images as
150dpi. Just not good enough for many of the diagrams in Mellor's.
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Xenoid
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| Quote: | Originally posted by janger
It will take me a while, but I'm currently scanning "Mellor's Modern Inorganic Chemistry, Revised Ed, 1961" |
Janger - good luck with this, I'm sure it will be much appreciated by members of this forum. This volume (1024 pages) has also been my "bible" since I
bought it as a young teenager in the early 1960's. I found it so interesting that I used to read it in bed at night, dreaming of one day having access
to some of the "exotic" chemicals described.
My only wish was that more of the volume was devoted to the elements and the preparation their compounds, and less to various aspects of theory, some
of which is now a little dated.
My copy is still in very good condition, I put a plastic cover on it soon after purchase. It
still has the price label "73/6" (73 shillings and 6 pence Australian). I'm not sure what that is in todays money, but I guess I had to save a lot of
pocket money... 
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janger
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| Quote: | | Originally posted by XenoidI found it so interesting that I used to read it in bed at night, dreaming of one day having access to some of the
"exotic" chemicals described. |
 That's so funny. Mine is falling apart from doing the same thing. One of my
inorganic chem lecturers years ago also had a copy and it was one of his bibles too.
| Quote: | | My only wish was that more of the volume was devoted to the elements and the preparation their compounds, |
Yeah, but there is still a wealth of information on preparations. The historical stuff is also interesting, and hints to
"alternative" or forgotten syntheses of several compounds.
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sbovisjb1
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Its pretty much a staple of chem lovers everywhere.... 
\"Chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost maniacal
impulse to seek their pleasures amongst smoke and vapour, soot and flames,
poisons and poverty, yet amongst all these evils I seem to live so sweetly
that I would rather die than change places with the King of Persia.\"
-- Johann Joachim Becher
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