Data capture by optical scanning of published material for database enhancement

A feasibility study undertaken by the Water Research Centre to capture 30,000 items from Water Pollution Abstracts in machine readable form is reported. The equipment used to capture a one year sample of these abstracts is the Kurzweil Data Entry Machine (KDEM), a computer controlled scanning device which captures lines of text for direct output to magnetic medium. After further manipulation using word processing equipment and indexing using the ASSASSIN suite of programs, the abstracts are to be added to the publicly available database, AQUALINE. The relevance of this bibliographic material to the water industry is discussed with the aid of citation analysis of four relevant journals. The speed and accuracy of the technique is described and the final cost reported is far less than the expected cost for re-keying the data. The technique should have widespread applications for related tasks, and should become more common as similar equipment to the KDEM becomes more readily available.