PEDISTAL: A Personal Document Imaging System

The office of the past, and much of the present is still governed by the use of paper for transactions and especially information storage and recovery. Will this ever change in any significant way? I believe it will and currently available technology can change the way business is done. Currently, there are quite a few document image management products available for medium to large businesses. To function properly, these solutions are often expensive and require a fair amount of operator training as well as database experience etc. The purpose of Personal Document Imaging or PDI is to provide a simple cost-effective solution for individuals and perhaps very small businesses consisting of just a few people. This paper describes what such a system does, could do and might look like. The author has built a prototype system called PEDITSAL, that is used constantly and has at least survived the test of actual utility. Most of us have to decide what paper(s) to keep and which documents to throw out for file space reasons. The PDI system renders such decisions increasingly unnecessary due to the low cost nature of the solution.