Background

The marketing department of the Universidad Interamericana is responsible for archiving news, articles and promotions published in Puerto Rico’s newspapers related specifically to the university or to higher education.  It is also responsible for archiving photographs of events and activities in and outside the university.  This collection of documents serves as a historical archive of events and news that weave the institution history through the 1990’s and 2000’s. 

An estimated 12,000 newspaper clippings have been collected, indexed and archived from 1990 to this date.  It is also their responsibility to have the information assets in this archive available for other organizations within the University.  For example, the athletics department is interested in the career record of an athlete during his/her tenure they may request information about the inter-university games (Justas LAI) results for the year 1996.  Based on the year 1996 and the fact that the games are usually held in April, the staff will go to the file for April 1996 and look for clippings related to the games.  These clippings used to be copied and faxed to the requester, manually.

System Objectives

The Document Management System is intended to;

• replace the paper archives with their digital equivalent,
• provide an efficient document retrieval mechanism and,
• provide an efficient distribution mechanism. 

Digitizing information assets for indexing and retrieval

It is worth explaining the technical aspects of digitizing these documents and the alternatives.  When a document is scanned, a digital image of it is created.  The quality of this image will depend on the conditions of the document (de-coloration, dust, etc) and the quality of the scanner (resolution measured in dots per inch, DPI). 

For instance, a newspaper page usually consists of text and/or images.  The digital image of the page will consist of an image or series of images but not necessarily of text in a format that can be ‘read’ by a computer.  Most scanners are equipped with software that can ‘read’ the text and reproduce this text as part of the image using a technology called OCR (Optical Character Recognition).  However, straight, out-of-the-box OCR software will generate a text document that does not even resembles the original document. 

Why is text important?  Document management systems have the capacity to index the text contained in documents and give the user the capacity to search documents by words or phrases.  Once the specific document is found, the document should be presented as close to the original document as possible. 

Enter Image-plus-Text.  This technology takes an image of a document and creates a ‘copy’ of the document in text format or extracts the text and attaches it to the image so that the document could be searched by words or phrases and also can be reproduced as it first was created or published.  This requires an additional step in the digitizing process.  First, the document is scanned and an image is created in a graphic format (JPEG, TIFF) and then this image is converted into an image-plus-text document.  The de facto industry standard for these converted files is the Portable Document Format or PDF, which is even more compact in size than the graphic format such as JPEG. 

Technical considerations for a Document Management System.

Our technical solution was evaluated upon the following criteria;

document loading,

1. filing,
2. retrieval,
3. distribution,
4. administration,
5. scalability,
6. accessibility and
7. security.

Document loading.  Documents can also be transferred into the system in several ways.  Using an ‘Upload’ function, which for a single document is very intuitive and easy to use.  Mass uploads can also be made.  Documents can also be uploaded with FTP (File Transfer Protocol) through the Internet. 

Filing.  Once a document is in the system, it must be filed.  Filing entails the process of cataloguing each document and placing it in a specific cabinet and, within each cabinet, a folder.  This is similar to the file structure in a windows environment.  Documents can be re-named within the system.  Keywords and text can also be attached to a document.  These features are especially useful when working with photographs or graphic material without text.  During the filing process these systems will index the text in an image-plus-text document.  This index is later used for searching.

Retrieval.  This is the most important feature of the system.  After the documents have been loaded and filed, users need the ability to search and find specific documents based on names of people, places or events.  Sometimes documents are found based on dates or date range.  The manner in which search results are presented is also important.  Several documents may contain the word ‘Justas’, but which one is it?  The system presents a list of documents with an excerpt of each document, to help the user narrow the search.  This excerpt is automatically created for text or image-plus-text documents during the filing and indexing process.

Distribution.  The marketing department is responsible for providing copies of documents requested by other departments within the university.  Requests for documents or information may come in very specific terms as in ‘the news article from El Nuevo Dia on the inauguration of the new facilities of the Law School in 1993’ or more broad request for information about and athlete.  The document management system has the functionality to forward documents to a person through email using it’s own email system or using an email program such as MS Outlook or, in some systems, via fax using.

Administration.  There are several administrative functions that a system can support, creation and maintenance of users and their privileges, creation and maintenance of cabinets and folders and maintenance of documents.

Scalability.  In addition to filing and retrieval of document, some systems could support workflow functions and collaboration.  For example, if a user is working on a new copy for the new academic year’s enrollment campaign, the document can be loaded into the system where people can take turns at reviewing and editing this document.

Accessibility.  This type of software could be built either as a web-based (uses internet browser to run) or as a stand-alone application that resides in a workstation.  For web-based systems this means is that there is no need to install additional software in a user’s PC.  All that is required is an Internet browser, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is recommended.  This system could reside in the University’s Intranet, so that it can be accessed from anywhere in the University’s campuses or facilities as long as they are connected to the Intranet.

Security.  The system security is very stringent because it provides access control first and foremost to the system itself and users are granted access to specific cabinets and folders and to specific activities (View, Modify, Delete, Copy, Forward, Email and Fax).  For example, a user can access the Sports cabinet with read-only privileges.  An activity log and reporting tools allows the administrator to oversee what users are doing in the system.

Conclusion

The advantages of digital storage over physical are well known, but managing your company’s information assets is still quite challenging.  When making the transition from physical to digital we must consider how to deal with the existing assets (archives) and how to manage the information workflow moving forward.  We must select or design a digitizing strategy that depends on the nature and foreseen use of the converted assets.  We also recommend that your Document Management solution is evaluated upon the aforementioned criteria.