[P1] Paperless Office Achieved?

[Don Hinkle]

Jack, thanks! That's some clear ideas for me to think about.
-don

Jack Rodgers wrote:

Scanning documents into the computer is only part of the problem. You

> can buy a scanner with a document feeder and depending upon how high
> your stack of papers, a few very large hard drives.
>
> After you have a 10,000 or so scanned documents, you will discover that
> you cannot find the one document with the phrase "this is the important
> phrase I want to find". The reason is that the documents are scanned as
> bit image graphics and as such text does not exist.
>
> So, you could create a database for keywords, etc. and add a field for
> filename and then search the database to find the document name. Adding
> useable keywords is important as is the design of the database. With
> Filemaker this would be easy and you could either store the docs in the
> database, not really recommended, or just use pointers to them, an
> option Filemaker offers. You then organize your files on permanent
> storage so nothing moves or is deleted. Do a find with Filemaker and
> the document can be displayed on the layout.
>
> Optical recognition software will take your scanned graphics and
> convert them into text but the scans suffer from inaccurate recognition
> and the spelling errors can be quite high. The advantage is that the
> resulting text requires significantly less hd space than the graphic.
>
> Another possibility is to go to the distributor of the info and ask if
> they have it on a database or CD. Parts books that take up 12 or more
> inches on your shelves can be reduced to a database of a 100 megs or so
> that hides away on your hard drive. Some vendors supply CDs with
> breakaway parts, etc.

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