Automated Transfer of Information From Paper Documents to ComputerAccessible Media Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Automated Transfer of Information From Paper Documents to Computer-Accessible Media

In most organizations, the bulk of the information is maintained on paper. Paper based documents are unfortunately difficult to maintain and to update, and retrieving information from paper-based documents is a labor-intensive endeavor.

Transfer of information from paper documents to computer accessible media, by methods other than manual keying, is indeed an interesting proposition. The technology in this area has improved significantly in recent years, and there are many applications which can benefit from such advance in the immediate future.

As is characteristic of most evolving fields, there are still gaps in what is expected of reading machines and what they are able to do today. Literature published by the vendors in this area contains specifications for their products, but these specifications are not easy to analyze on a comparative basis for specific user applications. Also, there is no benchmark test that are commonly accepted in this field.

In order to mitigate some of the weaknesses mentioned above, researchers at mit's Sloan School of Management have launched an initiative to evaluate all major approaches and significant products with a view to determining overall trends. These researchers have also created a scheme for classifying paper documents based on their quality and their content. Using their classification scheme, it is possible to look at a document and quickly determine in which year off-the-shelf products either became available or will become available to read that document.

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