Batch OCR'ing from GIF's/TIFF's/bitmaps?

Folks on this list have expressed strong opinions in the past on the subject of how to best OCR old important documents. Recent donations to the DECUS archives here have resulted in several important abstract books that I want to link electronically (i.e. by HTTP) to the files already rescued from magnetic or punched paper media. (See, for example, http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/www/lib10/index.html for the TOPS-10 abstracts linked to the files from DECUS library tapes.) I've spent the past weekend playing with scanners and OCR on PC-clones running various Microsoft OS's. And, of course, I'm extremely unhappy with the point-and-drool misery of doing all of this - there's no reason I should have to click with the mouse for every single page I need converted. So the question: does anyone have recommendations (preferably for freeware, though I would be willing to spend a few hundred dollars for good tools, too) for software that will process already-scanned .GIF's/TIFF's/bitmaps through the OCR process unattended? Ideally there'd be a command line interface, something like ocr page*.gif > bigoutputfile.txt and ideally it would run under Linux as well, though I wouldn't complain too strongly if someone recommended a Windows solution. If it does run under Linux, it'd be *very* nice for batch processing if it didn't need X11 and mouse-point-and-drool interfacing. Tim. (shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com)