[NHCOLL-L:1590] Off-site keyboarding of hand-written catalogs?

[Thomas J. Trombone]

Does anyone have experience with using a professional service to
electronically transcribe catalog data from hand-written volumes?  I am
considering such services, but I am concerned about such issues as
illegibility of the source data, proper parsing of geographic fields,
interpretation of haphazardly written "ditto" marks, etc.  Some vendors
have balked at such a project, but others claim to have considerable
expertise working with digital images of handwritten pages (one of the
latter is Apex Data Services).  Any information would be most
appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom

Thomas J. Trombone
Data Manager
Division of Vertebrate Zoology - Ornithology
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West @ 79th Street
New York, NY 10024-5192
 
Phone: (212) 313-7783
Email: trombone at amnh.org
URL: http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/