Re:Ask HN: I scanned an old paper book. How to turn it into ...
by ThinkBeat on Wednesday November 30, 2022 @08:34AM
(#33800450)
I do have the text OCRed for the most part.
I do have to go through it all and look for mistakes.
As it stands right now it is all in one PDF file.
Each page is an image with text available "beneath" (?)
So you can highlight text and copy paste if you want.
but yes.
I am not sure I will ever have the time to truly make it perfect.
I will have to try and see how easy / hard it is.
Once you have a PDF, that is an eBook. There are several online converters that can turn it into other formats. As for indices, etc., Acrobat won't make them automatically but your OCR'd eBook is searchable, so it may not matter in the same way it would with print.
I'd say the world would be better off with your rough-and-ready PDF (and yes, in the Internet Archive would be great!) than waiting for a perfect hand-made version.