But OCR in my limited experience still requires spell checking - and proof reading which is not the same thing - so does it really save time and effort? In my view, no. if the error rate is as high as this one is!
Although I've read a lot about OCR technology over the years, particularly from the point of view of its application to historical documents, I have very limited practical experience, so can't really comment on the spell checking and proof reading aspects, - although, as regards achieving a reasonably high degree of accuracy, especially with material such as 19th century enumerators census enumeration books, I'd tend to believe that your statement is correct.
The saving grace here may be the fact that the Ancestry versions are searchable in a different manner and an additional field compared to the GROS versions at
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk .
As far as I'm concerned, however, until a body of experience with the Ancestry versions has built up so that I can take a considered view on extent to which OCR technology has or hasn't so mangled too many surnames, so that wildcard searching is problematic in terms of the ease, difficulty, or even impossibility of setting up wildcard search strategies, then I have to say that, for me, the jury's still out !
And, Ibi, what course do you run?
Email me on
* and you'll be one of the very first to learn of a whole new set of courses launched literally 45 mins ago on the www (they've been a lot longer in the preparation
), - by a group of instructors who used to be involved in courses that were known in North America as "the best kept secret in the genealogical world" !!
ibi
email address removed to prevent spam and other abuse
