I have a lot of old fig related information that I'd like to scan and make available.
The problem is that I'm not computer savvy and not sure how to go about it.  Is there any program in Windows (XP) that would let me do that without making a file for each page, or do I have to get an Adobe program (and which one)?

You need a scanner, and OCR software, such as Omnipage. If you can scan them and e-mail them (or send them on a CD), I can probably OCR them for you, which will turn them into a PDF or Word.doc file.

Jon, I have a scanner and I think the new computer has OCR.  I chose it as an option a couple of times when scanning.  The result looked like garbled Russian with weird characters.
Is it possible to just scan a "picture" of the page and "mount" them in a program where you can turn pages without having a huge file?
I appreciate the offer, but it could be a lot of material, and I don't want to give you (a lot) more to do.  If I can learn what needs to be done, I can make this my winter project.

fignut,

You can use Adobe Writer to combine all your scans into one PDF document. You only need an OCR program if the scanned text is to be converted into editible text otherwise it's just a picture of the text. If you don't need to edit the text in your scan then all you need is Adobe Writer.

Sue