All OCR systems include an optical scanner for reading text, and sophisticated software for analyzing images. Most OCR systems use a combination of hardware (specialized circuit boards) and software to recognize characters, although some inexpensive systems do it entirely through software. Advanced OCR systems can read text in large variety of fonts, but they still have difficulty with handwritten text.

The potential of OCR systems is enormous because they enable users to harness the power of computers to access printed documents. OCR is already being used widely in the legal profession, where searches that once required hours or days can now be accomplished in a few seconds.

Yahoo!'s OCR software page
Yahoo!'s directory of OCR software.

OCR as a digitization technology - article
Provides an overview of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as it pertains to library digitization activities. Contains an overview of imaging and OCR.

Optical Character Recognition
An explanation of OCR and how scanners register the characters from ComputerWorld. (2002)