#PDFs! You asked for data. They gave you a PDF. What now?

##First thing Whaddya got -- tabular data on paper or a picture of tabular data on paper?

##Some useful things

• Tabula
• Cometdocs (IRE members get a free upgrade)
• Zamzar
• DocumentCloud (OCR/Open Calais)

##CLI/Python tools

• XPDF (PDF2text)
• PDFTK
• PDFMiner

##What does the law say? Public agencies in Nebraska are required to provide records "in any form designated by the requester in which the public record is maintained or produced, including, but not limited to, printouts, electronic data, discs, tapes, and photocopies."

PDFs are not data.