[nabs-l] technology question

[David Andrews]

Sean:

There are some of us old timers here who made it through college with 
human readers, and other primitive tools.  I agree with much of what 
you say, but will add that readers, OCR, digital audio books, 
electronic books, on-line books, etc., are all tools.  The more tools 
you can and will use, the better your chance of success.  I think 
people need to be flexible and use what is available, what works, and 
what they are comfortable.  There is no perfect tool, and no 
universal answer for all.  At 12:17 PM 4/23/2011, you wrote:
>Speaking only for myself, I couldn't disagree more. Scanning and OCR is, for
>me, vastly superior to using a human reader. Certainly readers are necessary
>for some tasks, but I got through college almost exclusively by scanning and
>OCRing my materials. Of course you are correct that the scans are imperfect,
>but the ability to read things at over 500 words per minute, as opposed to
>the maybe 200 at which a person can read aloud, makes the imperfections a
>small price to pay. I think that anybody who tries to get by exclusively on
>readers is putting her or himself at a distinct disadvantage. With an
>electronic text, you have access to the material any time you need it. If
>you use a reader, you only have direct access to whatever notes you happened
>to take. When you read e-texts, you are in direct control of the information
>presented and do not need to communicate your desires to another person. I
>100% agree that electronic texts and OCR should not be used to the exclusion
>of readers when there are reasons that make a human reader a better option,
>but neither should one rely solely on readers if they wish to maximize
>efficiency and have the best shot at success.
>
>
>
>Sean