Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 11:28:22 +0000
To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTS.CLIR.ORG
Hi All, Good morning from foggy Maryland. Materials scientists and aerospace engineers have these 1970s and 1980s (and prob before) technical reports with vast tables of experimental data. Pasting a picture below to give a flavor: [cid:image002.png_at_01DCC33B.72E4B430] I can OCR this with Acrobat Pro, but what's the current best for extracting the table? We can't upload this into a commercial service and our on prem AI models went "NOPE!" I tried tabula - and did ok with some of the tables sprinkled through the text but not ones like shown in the image. It looks like there are a number of tools intended for AI and RAG (like Docling). Does anyone have experience with these for this purpose? If it's a paid service also interested, depending on a number of factors. Thanks in advance, Christina Christina K. Pikas, PhD Principal Professional Staff Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd, Laurel, MD 20723 O: (240) 228-4812 [x]<https://twitter.com/JHUAPL> [bluesky] <https://bsky.app/profile/jhuapl.bsky.social> [facebook] <https://www.facebook.com/JHUAPL/> [instagram] <https://www.instagram.com/johnshopkinsapl/> [threads] <https://www.threads.net/@johnshopkinsapl> [youtube] <https://www.youtube.com/c/jhuapl> [linkedin] <https://www.linkedin.com/company/johns-hopkins-university-applied-physics-laboratory/> [Applied Physics Laboratory]<https://www.jhuapl.edu/>
