For Research Nerds: clipping information and making it OCR searchable

For Research Nerds: clipping information and making it OCR searchable

When I’m researching and I see a bit of text relevant to my WIP (either online or on Kindle), I will clip it: shift-command-4 and “pull” rectangle around the text I want.

It’s so easy to do I often end up with a mess on my computer desktop. Here’s a screen shot to give you an idea how things can look at the end of a day:

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated

My next step is to gather up all the clips and drag them into an empty “Today’s clips” folder. That, at least, looks manageable.

Graphical user interface, application Description automatically generated

Why it’s important to a researcher for all files to be searchable

Research clips are not of much use to me unless I can search the text. For example, if I was looking for clips about Mother of the Maids I should be able to search that title and all relevant files would be listed.

Clips are a png file, a type of photo, so how is this done?

For the text in a photo to be searchable it needs to have OCR — optical character recognition. Basically, OCR makes it possible to search for a word in a photo. Magic.

I’ve messed around with OCR software quite a bit over time. Software such as OneNote claims to convert files automatically, but sometimes so very slowly it’s not practical. Evernote can be touchy and deliver poor results. Also, I need to be able to easily move the OCR’d clip into my writing programmes (Scrivener and AEON Timeline, at this time), which I can’t do — at least not easily — out of Evernote or OneNote.

Why not send a clip directly to Scrivener?

One of the strengths of Scrivener is that I can clip a bit of text from a website directly into my project. However, Scrivener does not offer OCR (at least at this time), so while I will often post a web address URL to Scrivener, I won’t send a clip. I need to be able to search the text of a clip, and without OCR, I can’t do that.

ABBYY FineReader software to the rescue

FineReader is simply an awesome OCR software: fast, powerful and reliable, but at around $150 for Mac, it’s not cheap. (There is a 2-week free trial offered, however.) (Check: is it subscription for Pro?)

I’ll show you what FineReader does with a day’s pile of clips:

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I select and drag all of them into the Fine Reader icon in the dock:

It bounces around a bit as it does the work, and then, snap, it’s done.

FineReader, step-by-step

First I get a “Completed” notice with problem alerts — these I simply ignore and click “Close.”

The next screen shows small images of the clips on the left with enlarged versions on the right. I also ignore all that and click “Export” in the header.

That brings me to this window, which has the PDF option lightly highlighted. I ignore all the options in the middle and click Next in the lower right corner.

Graphical user interface, text, application, email Description automatically generated

The final window gives me the opportunity to name the collection. I type in “Today’s clips” and select where I want them to show up on my computer (desktop, for now).

Graphical user interface, text, application, email Description automatically generated

Caution!

The really, really, really important thing about this final window is to save each clip to a separate file. (Unless it’s a book file: You don’t want a separate file for each page!)

Click “Export,” and it’s done.

Done? Almost …

I now have 24 searchable clips which I rename and file to put into either AEON Timeline (for events and date-specific clips) or my Scrivener project file. I then trash the original unsearchable clips.

I do a computer search for “Mother of the Maids” and of the over 20 pdf files listed, my 3 newest clips that mention “Mother of the Maids” are listed at the top:

Success!

And that’s it, for now. Next up, I hope to write a blog post about Mrs. Stonor (sometimes Stoner), a Mother of the Maids who looked after the young, unmarried Maids of Honour who served most if not all of Henry VIII’s six wives. Four of these maids became the next wife and all four ended up dead.

Now there’s a story. :-)


After not using FineReader for a time, the documents would not come out searchable. I messed with this for hours without luck — until I clicked the “set to default” button in the last frame. :-)

The one problematic part of this process is that the file will come out “untitled,”  so I select and copy the title before putting it through the process.

“Flaneuring” through a morning: more research joys

“Flaneuring” through a morning: more research joys

It has been so long since I posted here I couldn’t figure out how to do it. My last post was at the end of October of last year, so close to six months ago. It feels more like a year to me, in part because of our molassas-slow new reality.

That post was The guilt, angst and joy of research, which helps explain the reason for my disappearance: Research!

I’m having what I consider a non-productive day: I’ve not written or edited a word. Resistance rules!

I’m fond of the French word flâneur, meaning an idle person who strolls about without object, who putters around, in other words.

Paul Gavarni, Le Flâneur, 1842

I’m especially fond of the verb form flâner, which means to stroll. Flânerie is the act of strolling, and that’s the kind of day I’m having. Distracted, easily side-tracked by shiny objects, unofficially off-track.

Or is it?

One of the things I came upon this morning were the animated portraits I made some time ago through My Heritage. It’s meant to allow people to animate photos of family members (which I found just a little creepy), but enchants me when used to animate historical portraits.

For example, based on a close-up clip from this portrait of Princess Elizabeth …

ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM SCROTS,
Elizabeth I when a Princess c.1546

… I made this charming animation:

 

Needless to say, I then had to make animations of most of my cast of characters.

A word of caution however

“Flaneuring” (our household verb) can also lead to overwhelm. In rediscovering these animations, I found I had computer folders of desktop contents five layers deep. It’s like an archeological dig.

Unexpected joys

The drawing above is a self-portrait I made for a delightful course on Domestika.org: The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art by Mattias Adolfsson. The Domestika courses are professional, very well done, and really inexpensive. I find them irresistible.

I hope wherever this finds you that you are finding unexpected joys in our life of confinement. I have more to say, but I’ll leave this short—an icebreaker, if you will, after a long silence.

As one might have said in the 16th century, Has’t a valorous day.