Method for hosting analog written materials in a networkable digital library

• US 20040199875A1
• Filed: 04/03/2003
• Published: 10/07/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 04/03/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Jason Kyle Samson
• Original Assignee: Jason Kyle Samson
• Inventors: Samson, Jason Kyle
• Application Number:
  US10/405,754
• Publication Number:
  US 20040199875A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/249
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5846 using extracted text

Abstract

This invention claims a unique method for storing and hosting analog content (e.g. print book, film, etc.) in a digital library over a network (e.g. Internet). This method dramatically reduces the cost of hosting these analog materials when machine readable text does not yet exist. This method simultaneously provides the important benefits offered by the more expensive traditional digitization methods including full content searchability and high viewable accuracy. The method achieves these goals at a substantially lower cost by eliminating the need for the most expensive phase of digitization, the manual correction of OCR errors. By hosting pixel-based images alongside the OCR-generated text, researchers gain 100% readable accuracy in addition to full content searchability at an affordable price. The value of this method is further enhanced through the use of textual channels that offer accuracy improvements over uncorrected OCR without the expense of manual OCR error correction.

Claims

1. A method for hosting analog written materials in a networkable digital library comprising of three steps:

(a) digitizing segments of analog written material into a minimum of these two forms;

     1) a digital form that is comprised of a graphical representation of the segment of written material, and

     2) a digital form that is comprised of a textual representation of the same segment of written material; and

(b) electronically storing the written material in each of the digitized forms along with corresponding segment identifiers that associate each segment of analog material with each of the digitized forms; and

(c) making each digitized form available for display to the digital library users thereby enabling them to choose which forms to display based upon their needs.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said analog material includes printed material.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said analog material includes photographic film.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein said analog material includes microfiche.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein said segments are pages of written material.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said graphical representation is comprised of pixel-based graphic data.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein said graphical representation is comprised of vector-based graphic data.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein said textual representation is initially generated from optical character recognition (OCR) software through a process consisting of 1) digitizing an analog segment into a graphical representation of the segment, followed by 2) processing the graphical representation with OCR software, which outputs a textual representation of the segment. Those skilled in the art will recognize that this initial OCR process may also be followed by human-guided OCR error-correction processes.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein said textual representation is generated multiple times for each segment, each using differing OCR software processes, programs, or configurations. The resulting textual outputs are each stored in the storage system and may each be displayed to the library user. The utility of this claim derives from the fact that some OCR processes will perform better than others on some segments, but worse than others on other segments. Offering the results of multiple OCR processes for display enables library users to view the results of each in order to find the one that yielded the best results for the segment that they are viewing. Hereinafter, the resulting outputs of each of the differing OCR processes are referred to as a “

OCR channels”

.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein additional textual representations are derived from other textual representations of the written material. These derived textual representations are hereinafter referred to as “

super channels”

. The derivation of text to be included in a super channel may be based upon any measures that help to determine the relative reliability of the textual representations that the super channels are derived from. The resulting super channel is a single textual rendering of the writings of the analog segment, with a goal of being superior in accuracy to any of the textual representations from which it was derived.

11. The method of claim 8 wherein said library users are allowed to make corrections to OCR generated text. The user-corrected textual representations of the segments of written materials are hereinafter referred to as “

user channels”

. This claim may have significant utility toward the purpose of this invention when it is in the library user'"'"'s best interest to correct frequently-referenced segments.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein said textual representations are supplied by other available sources, hereinafter referred to as “

supplied channels”

. This claim may have significant utility when textual representations exist and are available from other sources (e.g. the publishers of the written materials) that exceed the quality of OCR processes.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein said textual form also includes some embedded pixel-based graphical elements. This claim may have significant utility toward the purpose of this invention when special characters and pictorial elements, which have no meaningful textual rendering, exist in the analog segment.