School Notes Scanning – Efficiency 101

School Notes Scanning…

Make Your Hard Work, Work For You!

 

Today’s world is definitely more digital than ever, but pen and paper is still the most recommended way to absorb and retain information. The downside of that is the incredible amount of paper you’re left with at the end of your year or program. Whether you want to keep these notes for yourself, or share them with others, (perhaps to include in your autobiography when you’re famous!), school notes scanning can help you save space and make these papers accessible again.

So now that you’d decided to preserve your college notes, how do you begin?   There are many self-scanning options out there and the software available is incredibly helpful, if sometimes a bit expensive. What you need to consider is just how many binders or notebooks you have and whether the time it will take you, using a personal machine, is worth more than the time and money that’s required to outsource. A benefit to outsourcing is a level of professional quality that you’ll receive, but of course, in order to be sure that you receive that quality of work, you will need to do your research. (Don’t worry… you shouldn’t have to take notes for this kind!)

 

READ REVIEWS!

The best part about an open and online market is the ability to check up on various companies easily. Almost every self-respecting company out there has a Google page or Facebook presence or at the very least a Yelp page. Chances are, if they don’t have a listing on one of these, they’re not worth your time and money.

TALK TO THEM!

When you put in a request to these companies, they tend to have staff on hand whose entire job is to explain what they do and how they can help you specifically. Though it may seem like a simple process in theory, many don’t understand the ins and outs of scanning and digitizing documents properly and in the organizational way you prefer. Do you have binders? Do they have tabs? Labels? Do you need the originals back? Are there staples?  Bound notebooks are also a concern because in order to do the job properly and in a cost-effective way, these will most likely require unbinding. Are you ok with that?

COST VS. GAIN!

Once you’ve chosen a company to work with, pricing will become your main concern. Most scanning companies will have a range of prices for certain specifics. The range tends to be between $0.05 per scan and $0.12, depending on the contents, size and volume that you have.  Bound book scanning can as much as three times that! These prices are reasonable for the work to be done, but now you have to think about whether the cost is worth it to you. Do you REALLY need these papers from your first gen-ed class as a freshman? Perhaps maybe just the sciences are useful to you. Now is the time to go through and pre-organize your notes so you’re not paying for something you don’t really need

COMMIT!

Now’s the scary part. Trusting someone else to keep your goldmine of information safe and scan your documents accurately and completely is a huge leap of faith. Trust me on this though, the long run makes it ENTIRELY worth it. Send off your notes to a scanning facility one day and in a few days to a few weeks, the full shelves and boxes of notes you stuff under your bed or in closets are gone and you’re left with a Tiny. Little. Organized. Flash drive of information. Amazing!

CHECK FOR QUALITY AND REAP YOUR REWARDS!

Yes, you did your homework and chose a great company, but you still have a responsibility to them and yourself to go over their work. Perhaps page by page isn’t necessary, (though please, feel free!), but definitely a good skim of each PDF you receive to make sure nothing is missing and all pages are legible. The most common choice after scanning, is to have your chosen company securely shred the original files. Once you approve the scans, of course. You definitely don’t want that happening without your full confidence that they’ve done what you asked.

Now all that’s left is to sit back, relax and read through your PDF notes with ease on your tablet, computer or phone!

The Round Up

Scanning your school notes, though a process, can be entirely worth the end result for the right student. Preserving your hard work and thought processes can be huge for anyone looking to further education down the line, or just to refer back to in a few years when that random really intense lab from six years ago, suddenly becomes relevant in the real world.

Even if you’re in your first year or two, it’s a great opportunity to get a jump on organization and make your student life, that much easier.

 

Has a document scanning service or process worked for you? Leave us a comment below!