WYNN Tip: Creative Ideas for Getting Text Scanned

(Excerpted from the WYNN Forum on www.closingthegap.com)

1. Take your textbooks to the local Kinko’s and have them cut the binding and put them in a flexible binder. This makes textbooks easier to scan.
2. Use educational assistants to do the scanning.
3. Use Bookshare.org to access books others have already scanned.
4. Hire a high school vocational group or a group of transition kids who would benefit from some training in specific skills.
5. Get the Junior National Honor Society or other service clubs to scan items. They often need projects to accumulate volunteer hours.
6. Start a summer “work-study” program that will have students scanning books. This serves two purposes — it gives students summer job opportunities and enables textbooks to be scanned and ready to go by the new school year.
7. In Wisconsin, inmates in a correctional institution have been trained in scanning and editing. After they have scanned a textbook, they burn the text to CD, then return the book & CD to the district.
8. Have parent volunteers assist with scanning.
9. Find out-of-copyright books and other historical documents on the Internet (because you don’t need to scan them!)
10. Request electronic versions of the text in ASCII or .doc format from publishers (must have hard-copy of book)