Document Scanning - The Five Golden Rules of Document Preparation
Document Scanning - The Five Golden Rules of Document Preparation
The Preparation of paper documents, "prep" as we will now call it, is assumed to be such a simple and blindingly obvious activity that it is rarely given much thought. A simple mistake at this stage can render the scanning and indexing stages totaly impossible. So here are Five Golden Rules to ensure that you get it right first time:
1. Prep Away from the Scanner.
All document prep should be carried out on a separate table or desk from the one where the scanner is located. Staples are little demons in disguise and like nothing better than to climb into the internal workings of scanners and bring them to a shuddering halt.
However harmless a wondering rogue staple may look it can cause days of delay whilst you wait for the engineer to come and repair your equipment. That is not to mention the cost of the repair at roughly 130.00/ hour plus parts.
2. Use Sort Quick
Use what? I can Hear you say. Sort Quick ( or Finger Quick ) is a brand name for a tub of finger wax. Most people will be familiar with the spiky rubber finger hedgehogs that are often used in banks when flicking through piles of notes.
When you are prepping all day these become unbearably uncomfortable and are only practical on one or two fingers. What ever you do please no licking your fingers as you have no idea where the paper has been.
3. Use the right De-Stapler
De-staplers come in many shapes, sizes and designs.
Chose the best for the job which is usually the Vampire De-stapler,this is fine for for most standard sizes of staples and can be used very quickly with a little practice. It is readily available for most stationers.
Other designs may suit you better so order one or two of each and give them all a go. There are heavy duty versions available for the large staples used to secure big bundles of documents.
If all else fails a pair of electrical side cutters can be used but beware ! As you are working on the top of the staple the bottom can turn round and fasten you to the work in hand. This is not nice.
4. Always place Documents the same way up
When you are prepping it is obvious that the documents will go with the top of the document away from you i.e. the top enters the scanner first. But what about documents that are printed in a landscape format ?
You must decide on a convention and we always use Top to the Left. Although this is arbitrary you should always place pages the same way. If this is not done people prepping may change the way that they place pages within a batch and if you ever view a set of documents where they have been scanned different ways round you will appreciate how difficult they are to read.
5. Face Up or Face Down ?
This refers to the documents and not to you. If you have a pile of documents and you pick up one at a time and place them in a separate pile you must be careful which way up they face.
If they face up they will be in the reverse order to that in which they were originally filed. This is handy if documents were placed in a lever arch file as they came in i.e. most recent document at the top and you wish them to be in date order starting with the oldest first.
If they are placed face down they will remain in the original order. Therefore if you are placing your documents face up when you come across a batch that do not need prepping you must remember not to place the bundle down all together. This would leave a section of un-reversed documents in the center of a section of those that have been reversed.
If in doubt number a few pages and practice both methods noting exactly what happens. Believe me this has fooled the best of us on a bad day.
Conclusion
Follow these five simple rules and when you come to scan and index the documents you will have no problems. It will be a breeze.
I hope that this has helped. If you need more in depth information on Document Scanning please visit our web site.
Brian Gregory
Pagefree Ltd
http://www.pagefree.co.uk
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