Document Scanners 

  Fujitsu ScanSnap S510
  Fujitsu ScanSnap S300
  Fujitsu 6130 scanner 

Fujitsu 6230 scanner 
  Fujitsu 6140 scanner 

Fujitsu 6240 scanner 
  Fujitsu 5530C scanner
 

  Kodak i1400 series     
  Kodak i600 series
 

Canon Scanners
  Canon ScanFront scanner
  Canon 7580 scanner
  Canon 9080C scanner
  Canon DR-X10C scanner
 

Panasonic Scanners
  Panasonic KV-S1025C


Xerox Scanners
  DocuMate 272 scanner

Bell+Howell Scanners
  Spectrum XF scanner


Alliance BatchScan

Alliance Imager 

    Document Scanners

Document Management and Document Imaging systems require document scanners to scan paper documents and save them as images. Scanner manufacturers include Fujitsu, Kodak, Canon, Panasonic, Bowe Bell+Howell and Xerox. Here are a few points to look for:

A Flatbed Scanner allows you to position a document on the glass and scan it. This provides the flexibility to scan damaged or fragile documents, books or stapled documents but is a relatively slow method of scanning.
A Sheet-feeder (or Automatic Document Feed) allows a pile of documents to be scanned, though all must be in good condition and unstapled.
Some scanners offer both Flatbed and Sheetfeed (or Automatic Document Feeds). Sheetfeed-only scanners are typically faster and less expensive than dual purpose scanners.

Black and White scanning is suitable for most Document Imaging. There is usually little point in scanning, say, Invoices or Letters in colour.
In many cases Drawings and Photographs are better scanned in Greyscale (that is in various shades of grey) rather than Black and White.
More and more there is a requirement to scan in colour. Colour leaflets and photographs can be accurately reproduced with a colour scanner. You should identify your requirements and select a suitable scanner.
Most scanners will scan in colour, greyscale or monochrome (black and white) but some (particularly high speed scanners) may not be capable of colour scanning. 

Duplex scanning is the ability to scan both sides of a sheet of paper at the same time. The requirement for this feature is entirely dependent upon the type of documents you wish to scan.
Simplex scanners scan only one side of a sheet.

Most document scanners scan A4 (or Letter) sized documents. Optionally A3 scanners may be preferred (these will also scan A4 of course). Larger formats such as A0 size are also available.

Document Imaging scanners are available in a range of scan speeds. 10-15 pages per minute is usually the minimum acceptable speed. Mid range scanners typically scan at 20-45 pages per minute whilst production scanners scan at over 50 pages per minute. Scan speeds are available at up to 120 pages per minute.
Duplex Scanners (see above) can scan both sides of a page at the same time resulting in higher scan speeds (when measured in images per minute rather than pages per minute).

Note that most manufacturers quote scan speeds when scanning at 200dpi (and in A4 even if the scanner can scan A3 sizes), higher resolutions will result in lower speeds. 

Not to be confused with scan speed, throughput measures how many pages a scanner can scan in a day. A heavy-duty scanner will have a higher throughput than a light-duty scanner even if their scan speeds are identical.
For example, Kodak's  i1320 and i1420 scanners both scan at 60 pages per minute but the i1320 is rated at 1,500 pages per day whilst the i1420 can scan 7,500 pages per day.

Resolution ?

Scanners allow a choice of resolution. Typically the higher the resolution the better the quality of the scan but the storage requirement will also be more. Resolution is measured in dots-per-inch (dpi).
We normally recommend scanning monochrome documents at 200dpi or preferably 300 dpi. If you also wish to OCR (see below) a document 300dpi is usually required.
There is normally no advantage in scanning in a document at a higher resolution than it was originally printed. If a letter was printed on a laser printer at 300dpi scanning at more than 300dpi will not improve it.

Note that scanners achieve a given resolution in two possible ways - either by scanning optically at that resolution or by scanning at a lower optical resolution and then digitally enhancing the scan. A scanner with a high optical resolution will give better results than a scanner that relies on digital enhancement (but such scanners are usually more expensive).

The strategy for scanning will depend upon your particular requirements. You may provide individual users with their own (usually small and low-speed) scanners, you may provide a workgroup or department with a shared (usually mid-range) scanner or you may have a dedicated scanning facility (using high speed production scanners).

A scanned image is rather like a photograph or photocopy. You cannot electronically 'read' or edit the text on it. Optical Character Recognition gives you this facility. OCR will convert any text it finds on an image into electronically readable text. This text may then be edited (by Word Processing software, for example) or may be stored with the scanned image to enable searching for a given word or phrase.

A scanned image when saved to disk (either directly or via software such as document management or imaging) will be saved in a particular format. It is important to ensure that the format chosen is suitable for your requirements, and that the scanner can save into that format.
The two most common formats for document imaging are TIFF and PDF (Acrobat). TIFF is the most widely used for most Imaging applications but PDF can often be better if images need to be viewed by external users (via the internet or e-mail, for example). Not all scanners can save in PDF format however.
Other formats include JPEG (often used for colour photographs) and Bitmap.

TWAIN Scanning

TWAIN is an industry-standard method of allowing software to communicate with a scanner. A software package (such as Alliance Imager) can drive a scanner using TWAIN. The physical connection of a scanner to a PC will typically be via a USB or SCSI connection, though connection to a network (10/100 Ethernet) is also possible with some models.

An alternative method for a software package (such as Alliance BatchScan scanning) to drive a scanner is to use a Kofax Adrenaline interface card. This provides a physical connection of scanner to PC and also the driver software. Kofax is especially suitable for high speed scanners.

An enhancement to Kofax is Virtual ReScan scanning enhancement.
Virtual ReScan (VRS) enables you to get perfect scans every time. As quickly as images pass through the scanner, VRS performs a multi-point inspection of each document. It instantly checks and corrects for alignment (skew), brightness, contrast, and image clarity, so that only the best images are moved into your application.

Note that not all scanners can support Kofax.

Scanners need application software to drive them. A document management application, such as Alliance Imager document imaging or Alliance PaperChase records management can scan and index the scanned documents. This is typically suited to relatively low volumes of scanning.

For large volumes of scanning dedicated batch scanning software is recommended.  Alliance BatchScan scanning software scans and stores at high speed for subsequent indexing.

Indexing is the entry of data against each scan so that the document may be found when required. The amount of data entered for each document will be dependent upon the requirements of your application.
Indexing may be manual (by typing in the required data) or automatic (from a barcode printed on the document, or from OCR, or by sequential numbering).

Most scanners are suitable for use with Microsoft/Kodak/Wang Imaging for Windows.

We supply Imaging-for-windows scanning and imaging software, Alliance BatchScan document-scanning software, Alliance Imager document management and imaging software and Alliance PaperChase records-management software.