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March 31, 2011
What happens to records from closed schools?
You’ve made the decision to pursue a career in hair design. You’ve trimmed a few heads, and painted some nails, and now you want to make it official. You’ve found a school that can help you hone your skills and perfect your craft. You attend for a few years, get your diploma, and then the school closes down. What happens to your records?
The New York State Department of Education requires that records from such schools and academies be archived. Once they’re out of the hands of the administrators of the institution, it becomes the State Department of Education’s responsibility to have the records stored or scanned. E-BizDocs recently went to Brooklyn to retrieve records from two closed schools, both devoted to beauty and cosmetic education.
Having a school close down is never a happy experience, but in light of the circumstances, we try to make the removal of records as easy as possible. Working in Brooklyn is always exciting, as is finding parking. In this case, we were able to park right next to the building, but there was kind of a steep pitch to the basement stairs. After 80 boxes, we felt like we could have gotten a degree in physical education!
Background gradient removed with Perfect Page
The features in Kodak’s Perfect Page bridge all the gaps between the problems that traditional print design cause in digitizing your paper documents. In this example, we’ll see a document that has some background flourishes that look nice on paper, but create readability problems in the scanned image.
Paper document with background gradient
That’s a full color scan, which renders the text fairly readable. Still, a piece of paper that you can hold in your hand is even better to look at, because that’s what we’re all used to. Overall, this isn’t a bad conversion, however in terms of file size, color takes up a lot more space. If your project calls for bi-tonal scans, you may end up with an image like the one below, if you don’t have Perfect Page technology integrated.
Document with background gradient scanned without Perfect Page
As you can see, the text is completely lost. At every pixel, the software has to “decide” whether to place a black or white, and the result is a portion where the writing and the background conflict, and none of the information is readable.
Perfect Page technology can recognize gradients, watermarks, and other background noise and eliminate them. This last image shows you what the result is.
Scanned image with Perfect Page applied
Now you don’t have to decide between going with a full-color conversion or sacrificing some data.
March 30, 2011
Employee of the Month: March 2011
E-BizDocs is pleased to announce the Employee of the Month for March, 2011.
Ben Miller, a scan operator at E-BizDocs, has continually shown enthusiasm for his work, attention to quality, and consideration for his co-workers. Of particular interest to Director of Operations Ed Canary was the willingness of Ben Miller to help out other employees around him.
“He’s been here for a long time, and his knowledge regarding the job reflects that,” says Canary.
Miller has been posted at a document scanner for several years and enjoys the occasional trips out of the office to go on box pickups and serve other company needs.
March 25, 2011
Two shows in a day
To follow our busy last week, this week we attended two shows at which you might have seen us. We were at CRHRA and the Preferred Source Vendor Fair at the University at Albany.
Our table at the Preferred Source Vendor Fair
I had the pleasure of overseeing the table at U Albany and meeting many of the individuals responsible for keeping the place running smoothly and serving their students and community efficiently. We only hope to be able help them become even more efficient in the future!
The White Wall
For those of you who have seen it thousands of times, this may not be of interest, but I found the wall to be extremely captivating. It’s a mosaic of varied items affixed to the wall and painted over in a greyish color that reminds me of the walls in Santa’s Workshop as depicted in the Rankin/Bass holiday specials.
But there’s not just items you might expect could fit on a wall, like buttons or pencils. There’s a cash register, a pinball machine, curtains, and much more. You could get lost just staring at this artistry forever, but there was work to be done.
Next time, I’ll have to take another few minutes to absorb some more.
March 22, 2011
Anidjar & Levine, P.A.
Courting the paper-intensive justice system with affordable
document management
Anidjar & Levine, P.A., a Fort Lauderdale, Fla. based personal injury law firm, prides itself on aggressively protecting the injured, and handling all aspects of clients’ claims. The good news is that they’re a trusted firm, with a reputation of being thorough, and that reputation means they now juggle numerous phone calls a day from clients, the courts, and other attorneys. . . .[read more]
March 10, 2011
Don’t hid your mug
Last year we launched a comic called Life of Paper. What started as a way to let off a some creative juices and muse on what the common piece of paper endures has grown into an E-BizDocs mascot. We’ve used the characters here and there on the website, on our various social properties, and now, on mugs.
It’s nice to have a little giveaway when we visit customer sites, and we thought a mug would be the most useful.
If you’re expecting a visit from E-BizDocs or you meet them at an event, keep an eye out, you may just get a mug to keep.
March 04, 2011
E-BizDocs continues growth pattern
Albany, NY – February 9, 2011 – Michelle Wheet was promoted to STAT Team manager. The announcement came at the monthly luncheon meeting with staff.
Michelle, who was hired as a part-time employee while continuing her education, has held several positions from index specialist, to team lead, to manager, accepting each as a challenge.
E-BizDocs owes a great share of its production to this group of employees that Michelle oversees. Boxes are received on a daily basis, and move through the digital conversion process in around a day’s time.
“I’m super-excited about it,” Michelle said. “It adds more tasks to my workday and gives me a greater variety of goals. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”
Since taking charge of the “short turnaround time” team, Michelle, an anime enthusiast, has routinely shown her ability to provide the speed and accuracy of product that is core to the E-BizDocs standard.
Ed Canary, Director of Operations, says of the announcement, “I was pleased. The STAT Team will definitely prosper under her oversight.”
"Elementary, my dear Watson."
The Valentine’s Day broadcast of the show Jeopardy! featured one of the most hotly discussed contestants to date: Watson, a super-computer developed by IBM. 
Watson, powered by DeepQA technology, pulled from 4 terabytes of data on its disks, including the full text of Wikipedia. (It’s not often you can say that you have a local copy of Wikipedia on your system.)
This doesn’t necessarily indicate a significant and immediate change for any of us or our businesses. But there is something to note here: this shows the potential of how fast data can move. Although it is the product of an unimaginable total of research and development hours (the likes of which few of us have access to), it should be of interest to all of us.
We are constantly trying to achieve greater efficiency in our offices. That means greater speed and accuracy, followed by an improved outcome. Notice Watson was not revealed to be a guy inside the box with a lot of paper. If we’re still clinging to paper in our office, we’re clinging to a medium that has no potential to help us achieve greater efficiency.
We may see the day when Watson-smart computers are on the market, but in the meantime, let’s get our feet on the path to faster, more efficient documents. Why ERM? “It’s elementary.”
March 01, 2011
License to Scan
License to Scan
The Challenge
The NYS Office of Professions is responsible for licensing over 30 different professions, ranging from Acupuncture to Veterinary Medicine. Each profession has its own requirements and verification process which is, and has been, heavily paper-based.
Copies of transcripts and diplomas, as well as the application and references, are required, and never are they all sent in at one time. This requires staff to constantly track down files and add or check the status of the application.
Managing this rush of paper is no small task. The Department wanted to digitize the records and store them electronically. One of the requirements from the onset was to be able to quickly and easily locate and read a file electronically without any loss of information or quality of the submitted documents. Additionally, the ability to annotate and redact the file was required. The agency is committed to being prepared for the future and thus wanted a system that would allow for limited and authorized web access if it becomes necessary.
The Solution
The NYS Department of Education was already an Alchemy (Electronic Records Management) customer. This made the selection of the repository easy, and the next set was to design the process. The database was created to store and retrieve the files as they are approved and, currently, the back log of applications is being scanned.
This process is being enhanced by the user’s requirement for color images. By performing all the scanning at 300DPI and in color, the file sizes would require more disk storage than the agency had planned for or could achieve. By using LuraTech PDF Compression software, the resulting output of the scanned images is a Color Compressed PDF/A, which is a long-term archival version of the Adobe PDF. This will ensure that the viewer will be available for the entire retention period of the record.
The compressed PDF/A also allows the image to be stored in about as much space as the black and white PDF would have used. This provides for the easy access and, more importantly, all color photos and diplomas are seen as the original was seen.
The Results
Files are easily accessible by all staff members to review and question. Documents are indexed by multiple fields, so retrieval is multi-dimensional, rather than just by name of applicant. Documents are small and very detailed so staff can identify color pictures and other submitted documents.
All documents will be monitored with an audit log so the chain of custody will be maintained and all members of the department who view or modify the record can be identified. The application is easily ported to the Web, and the agency is currently moving it to its intranet for ease of use. It will be possible to make it accessible through the Internet, as well.