Comments on: Document scanning and organizing

By: kingtut

kingtut — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:54:41 +0000

Building a Document Management System used by more than 1 person requires a taxonomy and/or metadata structure that provides a method which results in the file being placed in a single folder location (think of the filing cabinet metaphor). The key is to provide the fewest number of choices for the person inputting the data (filing the document) for each document to be managed. This number is controlled by the span of the documents in the collection. Using metadata also provides for keywords to search items in ways that differ from the taxonomy. One of our sites was also very big on using a file naming structure which allowed direct browsing of the document collection instead using the web interface based on the taxonomy. OCR can be a valuable add-on. I recommend using the “image + hidden text” type of PDF format. This format displays and prints the scanned image, but allows searches based on the OCR text results also contained in the file.

By: markpulse

markpulse — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:46:35 +0000

Depending upon your requirements, I may be able to offer some suggestions. Can you give a more thorough description of the capabilities you are searching for? It would help if you could also shhare what level of investment you are willing to make in a management system. There are systems designed for a wide range of organizations with varying requirements and budgets. They each can provide a broad range of additional capabilities where necessary. Email at mark.pulse@gmail.com if you would like some assistnace in getting your requirements more firmed up and documented so that you can eliminate the too-high or too-low fruit, and make a better judgement as to the proper capabilities required to meet your needs.

By: idongesitdaniel

idongesitdaniel — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:47:53 +0000

Hi skepticals,

You can try solution from betasystems. I use s similar procuct from them. You can please contact them on this site : http://www.beta-systems.com

Thank you,

IdongesitDaniel

By: skepticals

skepticals — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 08:50:28 +0000

Thanks for all the information. I’m not sure which way would be best. I guess even searching by file name might work as long as the person scanning puts in enough information. I think some type of small database would work better. I’m not a database programmer; so I was looking for something with similar results that is already out there.

By: itbird

itbird — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 06:06:39 +0000

Hi J

I use a program called Pro-file which is not expensive and allows you to keep track of all files, folders and archive CD/DVDs. Here’s the link:-

http://www.1-pro.com/

Hope that helps.

By: petkoa

petkoa — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 05:02:24 +0000

Hi skepticals,

How do you mean to search this database – by filenames, by some imagefile-embedded metadata (EXIF, IPTC ,etc.) or by user comments separate from the imagefiles?

The solutions should be quite different – in the first case probably placing images in the right folder will suffice; in the last – may be a simple MSAccess database; for searching in metadata you may try some freeware stuff (ImageQuery & friends)

Petko