What I want to do with ScanSnap
ScanSnap is state-of-the-art document scanner from PFU/Fujitsu.
To tell the truth, I had been negative with using scanner to scan index cards. My index cards are more than 3,000 now. Add tags of contents for all the cards from now? No way. Make digital database? I have analog database already. Why I have to duplicate it? Even I scan and handle index cards on digital, it is physically impossible to spread it on desktop like this picture. Handling index cards in “analog” is much fun.
All time I see someone who scan index cards, I ask him/her “what do you do with the flood of index cards?” in my mind. It just make double information in the system. As a result, complexity of system is also doubled. That is why number of scanned index cards in Cardlog is so limited.
Recently, however, I have been interested in another use of scanner : Statistical analysis. That is, scan PoIC tag and date/time stamp of all index cards in the dock. Then I will see a sequence of letters like,
with timestamp, where R: Record, D: Discovery, G: GTD, C: Cite (= Reference). I can analyse not only a number of index cards, but also distribution of four kinds per month or per day, transition of the distribution, or when discovery comes (such as morning or evening?). I think I can see some kind of pattern. And it will be a new knowledge.
Such statistical analysis makes sense with greater number of sample. Perhaps 3,000 index cards are not yet enough for it though. A scanner might be good for this kind of routine, troublesome job. It’s something like Perl in Bioinformatics. According to Jazzmasterson’s recent experiment, it is possible to scan 5×3 index cards by ScanSnap.
