diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 7183da22..d10012c5 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
 click>=8.1.7,<9.0.0
 datasets>=2.18.0,<3.0.0
-docling>=2.4.2,<3.0.0
+docling[tesserocr]>=2.4.2,<3.0.0
 GitPython>=3.1.42,<4.0.0
 httpx>=0.25.0,<1.0.0
 instructlab-schema>=0.4.0
diff --git a/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py b/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py
index 8946b8b7..19fe3acb 100644
--- a/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py
+++ b/src/instructlab/sdg/utils/chunkers.py
@@ -12,12 +12,19 @@
 from datasets import Dataset
 from docling.datamodel.base_models import InputFormat
 from docling.datamodel.document import ConversionResult
-from docling.datamodel.pipeline_options import PdfPipelineOptions
+from docling.datamodel.pipeline_options import (
+    EasyOcrOptions,
+    OcrOptions,
+    PdfPipelineOptions,
+    TesseractOcrOptions,
+)
 from docling.document_converter import (
     ConversionStatus,
     DocumentConverter,
     PdfFormatOption,
 )
+from docling.models.easyocr_model import EasyOcrModel
+from docling.models.tesseract_ocr_model import TesseractOcrModel
 from docling.pipeline.standard_pdf_pipeline import StandardPdfPipeline
 from langchain_text_splitters import Language, RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter
 from tabulate import tabulate
@@ -35,6 +42,29 @@ def _num_chars_from_tokens(num_tokens) -> int:
     return int(num_tokens * 4)  # 1 token ~ 4 English character
 
 
+def resolve_ocr_options() -> OcrOptions:
+    # First, attempt to use tesserocr
+    try:
+        ocr_options = TesseractOcrOptions()
+        _ = TesseractOcrModel(True, ocr_options)
+        return ocr_options
+    except ImportError:
+        # No tesserocr, so try something else
+        pass
+    try:
+        ocr_options = EasyOcrOptions()
+        # Keep easyocr models on the CPU instead of GPU
+        ocr_options.use_gpu = False
+        _ = EasyOcrModel(True, ocr_options)
+        return ocr_options
+    except ImportError:
+        # no easyocr either, so don't use any OCR
+        logger.error(
+            "Failed to load Tesseract and EasyOCR - disabling optical character recognition in PDF documents"
+        )
+        return None
+
+
 class FileTypes(Enum):
     MD = ".md"
     PDF = ".pdf"
@@ -212,9 +242,14 @@ def chunk_documents(self) -> List:
             return []
 
         model_artifacts_path = StandardPdfPipeline.download_models_hf()
-        pipeline_options = PdfPipelineOptions(artifacts_path=model_artifacts_path)
-        # Keep OCR models on the CPU instead of GPU
-        pipeline_options.ocr_options.use_gpu = False
+        pipeline_options = PdfPipelineOptions(
+            artifacts_path=model_artifacts_path,
+            do_ocr=False,
+        )
+        ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+        if ocr_options is not None:
+            pipeline_options.do_ocr = True
+            pipeline_options.ocr_options = ocr_options
         converter = DocumentConverter(
             format_options={
                 InputFormat.PDF: PdfFormatOption(pipeline_options=pipeline_options)
diff --git a/tests/test_chunkers.py b/tests/test_chunkers.py
index 0d327982..ff93e031 100644
--- a/tests/test_chunkers.py
+++ b/tests/test_chunkers.py
@@ -2,9 +2,11 @@
 
 # Standard
 from pathlib import Path
+from unittest.mock import MagicMock, patch
 import tempfile
 
 # Third Party
+from docling.datamodel.pipeline_options import EasyOcrOptions, TesseractOcrOptions
 import pytest
 
 # First Party
@@ -13,6 +15,7 @@
     DocumentChunker,
     FileTypes,
     TextSplitChunker,
+    resolve_ocr_options,
 )
 
 # Local
@@ -86,3 +89,52 @@ def test_chunker_factory_empty_filetype(documents_dir):
                 output_dir=temp_dir,
                 tokenizer_model_name="instructlab/merlinite-7b-lab",
             )
+
+
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_is_not_none():
+    """
+    Test that resolve_ocr_options does not return None, which means it
+    found a valid OCR library on the machine running this test
+    """
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert ocr_options is not None
+
+
+@patch("instructlab.sdg.utils.chunkers.TesseractOcrModel")
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_prefers_tessserocr(mock_tesseract):
+    """
+    Ensure resolve_ocr_options defaults to tesserocr if we're able
+    to load that library without error.
+    """
+    mock_tesseract.return_value = MagicMock()
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert isinstance(ocr_options, TesseractOcrOptions)
+
+
+@patch("instructlab.sdg.utils.chunkers.TesseractOcrModel")
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_falls_back_to_easyocr(mock_tesseract):
+    """
+    Ensure resolve_ocr_options falls back to easyocr if we cannot
+    load tesserocr.
+    """
+    mock_tesseract.side_effect = ImportError("mock import error")
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert isinstance(ocr_options, EasyOcrOptions)
+
+
+@patch("instructlab.sdg.utils.chunkers.TesseractOcrModel")
+@patch("instructlab.sdg.utils.chunkers.EasyOcrModel")
+@patch("logging.Logger.error")
+def test_resolve_ocr_options_none_found_logs_error(
+    mock_logger, mock_easyocr, mock_tesseract
+):
+    """
+    If we cannot load tesserocr or easyocr, ensure
+    resolve_ocr_options logs an error so that users are aware optical
+    character recognition in PDFs will be disabled.
+    """
+    mock_tesseract.side_effect = ImportError("mock import error")
+    mock_easyocr.side_effect = ImportError("mock import error")
+    ocr_options = resolve_ocr_options()
+    assert ocr_options is None
+    mock_logger.assert_called()