Bridging the Gap Between Real and Electronic Documents

2007

Current systems force users to store their documents in hierarchic filesystems. However, users remember their documents not in terms of ad-hoc categories, but of their contents, why they were written, etc. Describing documents using such autobiographic information would be a simpler and more effective way for users to retrieve them. Furthermore, we found that users mention printed versions of documents when retrieving them. However, current systems don't regard the printed and electronic versions of a document as facets of the same entity. To solve these problems we developed an interface that allows users to browse their autobiographic information, gathered by a specialpurpose monitoring subsystem, to retrieve their documents. We bridged the gap between the real and electronic worlds by maintaining the association between paper and electronic documents resorting to RFID technology. Tests show our interface allows users to efficiently retrieve their documents.

2004

Although the paperless office has been imminent for decades, documents in paper form continue to be used extensively in almost all organizations. Present-day information systems are designed on the premise that any paper document in use will be either converted into electronic form or merely printed from electronic file(s) accessible to the system. Yet, paper is the medium of choice in many situations, mainly owing to its portability and usability, and the medium of necessity in others, especially where external communication or the traditional notion of authenticity are involved. Humans who find unique attractive features in both paper and electronic forms of documents, must survive this tension between the de-jure banishment of paper and its de-facto prevalence. In this paper, we propose to make paper documents first-class citizens by including them in the model underlying the information system. Specifically, we extend the schema of a document database with the notion of paper documents, physical locations, and the organizational hierarchy. This leads to an overall enhancement of document integrity and the ability to answer queries such as "where are the customer complaint letters we have received today?" and "which documents are in this filing cabinet?". Recent technological advances such as sensors have made the implementation of such a model very realistic.

A Traditional document is a written or printed paper that bears different kind of information about the organization activities e.g. legal, managerial, etc. Nowadays mainly there are two types of documents, which will be referred to as traditional (paper) documents and digital (electronic) documents. This discrimination between the types of documents in additional to the advances in the field of computer applications, networking, internet, and other digital processing tools were good motivations to use the Electronic - Archiving Systems (EAS). E-archiving is one of the first steps toward creating electronic environment on which e-government is based. There are a lot of risks and limitations of using traditional archiving systems which nowadays are not suitable to be used in organizations. This paper is a study of the archiving systems in both formats, traditional and electronic. The advantages and limitations of Electronic Archiving Systems (EAS) have been discussed briefly. A comparison between both electronic and traditional systems has been carried out as well. Traditional documents definition and digital (electronic) documents has been presented in additional to the methods of converting traditional (paper) documents into digital ones which is called the digitization process was discussed also. A brief description and the phases of constructing an e-archiving system has been proposed and discussed briefly. Finally, the cost feasibility of constructing an e-archive or converting a traditional archive into an electronic one has been studied in two aspects; long term coast and short term coast aspects.

2008

Abstract Hierarchies are the most common way to help users organize their personal information. However, their use is fraught with problems. In particular, the users' documents, stored in the filesystem, are notoriously difficult to manage and retrieve. A way to alleviate those problems is to resort to a wide range of knowledge about the users, their actions and the world that surrounds them. Systems that have done so lack an organizing principle that helps users refer to all the information that might be relevant.

2004

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2005

In this paper the results of a two-year ethnographic study of the personal document management of 28 information workers is described. Both the paper and digital domain were taken into account during the study. The results reaffirmed that document management is strongly related to task management. Digital tools do not adequately support two important user needs related to task management, namely that documents should be embedded within meaningful (task-related) context information, and that they should be easily accessible for regrouping as the task goes on. In contrast, paper supports these needs very well. Following a discussion of personal document management using paper, email, and digital file folder structures, six implications are outlined for the design of digital document management systems that combine the advantages of both domains.

2007

Individuals are generating, storing and accessing more information than ever before. The information comes from a variety of sources such as the World Wide Web, email and books. Storage media is becoming larger and cheaper. This makes accumulation of information easy. When information is kept in large volumes, retrieving it becomes a problem unless there is a system in place for managing this. This study examined the techniques that users have devised to make retrieval of their documents easy and timely. A survey of user document management techniques was done through interviews. The uncovered techniques were then used to build an expert system that provides assistance with document management decision-making. The system provides recommendations on file naming and organization, document backup and archiving as well as suitable storage media. The system poses a series of questions to the user and offers recommendations on the basis of the responses given. The system was evaluated by two categories of users: those who had been interviewed during data collection and those who had not been interviewed. Both categories of users found the recommendations made by the system to be reasonable and indicated that the system was easy to use. Some users thought the system could be of great benefit to people new to computers. My heartfelt gratitude goes to Dr Hussein Suleman who supervised this project and provided guidance and suggestions on how to undertake it. I appreciate all the assistance he provided. I would also like to thank my classmates who provided support throughout my studies in UCT, in particular Victor Katoma. Thanks, Victor, for your time and patience. I would also like to thank Michael Kwesi Nyarko and Paolo Pietro Pileggi who came to my rescue when Java was having its way with me. Life should not come to a standstill when studying. Thanks to Oyapo Chimidza I came to realize that one can still have a life even if they are studying. I would like to thank all the people who touched my life in different ways while I was at UCT. Last, but not in any way suggesting that they are the least, I would like to thank my family for their support throughout my studies and my government for footing the bill for my studies. Now it is time to take a second look at the working world. Hopefully it will be better this time around.

Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '10, 2010

In the field of Human-Computer Interaction, provenance refers to the history and genealogy of a document or file. Provenance helps us to understand the evolution and relationships of files; how and when different versions of a document were created, or how different documents in a collection build on each other through copy-paste events. Though methods for tracking provenance and the subsequent use of this meta-data have been proposed and developed into tools, there have been no studies documenting the types and frequency of provenance events in typical computer use. This is knowledge essential for the design of efficient query methods and information displays. We conducted a longitudinal study of knowledge workers at Intel Corporation tracking provenance events in their computer use. We also interviewed knowledge workers to determine the effectiveness of provenance cues for document recall.