Is OCR useful for Paleontological Digitization Efforts?

Hi Paleontology Working Group!

The Augmenting OCR (aOCR) working group is wondering if any of the Paleontology collections are taking photos of the labels that often accompany paleontological specimens housed in drawers & boxes in those drawers.

Perhaps there are other image sets (of card files, or similar) that will be imaged during digitization of these collections? Field notebooks too?

We'd like to expand the use of Optical Character Recognition and post-processing algorithms beyond herbarium sheets, lichen and bryophyte packets, but only if this would be of value to the paleontological community.

We look forward to your comments! If these images exist, or you plan to take them, please let us know.

Thanks from Deb & the Augmenting OCR (aOCR) Working Group