Patent Issued for Integrated Digital-Analog Archiving Systems And Methods For Document Preservation (USPTO 10,515,050)

2020 JAN 08 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Open Text SA ULC (Halifax, Canada) has been issued patent number 10,515,050, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventor is Specht, Matthias (Grobenzell, DE).

This patent was filed on July 5, 2016 and was published online on January 6, 2020.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “There are many types of archives. Some may exist for historical purposes. For example, over the course of an individual or organization’s lifetime, documents may be kept to show a historical view of that person or organization. Some may be put in place by corporations or enterprises alike for compliance reasons. For example, in the United States, an employer is required to preserve for at least three years payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, sales and purchase records, etc.; the Internal Revenue Service requires all records of employment taxes be kept for at least four years; and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires a 6-year retention period for protected health information (PHI) such as patients’ medical records and other personal health information. Certain types of information, e.g., DNA work product, may be required to be preserved for even longer lengths of time, e.g., 99 years or more.

“Whatever the reason is for preserving such documents, they are traditionally assessed, collected, organized, and preserved by information professionals called archivists. The traditional document preservation process may entail reducing documents deemed worthy of long-term preservation and printing them onto microforms. Microforms can be films or paper that contain microreproductions (e.g., using microphotography or any suitable standard reproduction techniques known to those skilled in the art) of documents. Microform images are commonly reduced to about one twenty-fifth of the original document size. For special purposes, greater optical reductions may be used.

“Microforms can have different physical formats. For instance, microform images can be printed on microfilm (mounted on reels) or microfiche (flat sheets). The term ‘film’ generally refers to a thin translucent strip or sheet of cellulose coated with a light-sensitive emulsion, used in a camera to take still pictures or photographs. The term ‘microfilm’ generally refers to a film suitable for bearing a miniature photographic copy or a miniaturized reproduction of printed or other graphic matter, usually of a document, newspaper, or book pages, etc., made for a library, archive, or the like. The term ‘microfiche’ generally refers to a flat sheet of microfilm in a form suitable for filing printed or graphic matter, typically measuring 4 by 6 inches, and containing microreproductions, in a grid pattern. These archival media can be cataloged and stored in archival facilities. Archivists may maintain control over and provide access to the archival media.

“A document that has been through this traditional document preservation (analog archiving) process has a physical representation (e.g., on a piece of film) that has a measurable physical quality (e.g., the piece of film is 4 by 6 inches). The digital document preservation (digital archiving) process commonly used in today’s electronic environments is entirely different from the analog archiving process described above.

“In practice, a digital archiving process can be viewed as a records management process that ensures the protection, maintenance, and accessibility of certain documents and that begins from the moment a document is created and ends with the document being destroyed or preserved. To this end, a records management system is usually responsible for maintaining information on the creation and management of electronic archives in accordance with applicable regulations, policies, rules, and/or laws. Such a records management system can be an essential part of a content management system, because certain managed content may need to be preserved for compliance reasons, as discussed above.

“A digital archiving system such as a records management system described above may have many components, including software tools for creating and classifying records, software tools for managing security and confidentiality policies applicable to the records, and long-term storage media for storing the records electronically. However, when compared with the long-term storage media used in an analog archiving system (e.g., microfilms), the long-term storage media used in a digital archiving system (e.g., optical discs, hard drives, tapes, etc., collectively referred to as digital data storage media) have a significantly shorter lifespan. For example, with appropriate storage conditions, preservation standard microfilms have a life expectancy of 500 years. By contrast, digital data storage media generally have a practical life expectancy between 2 to 5 years and published life expectancies of 10, 25, and up to 30 years. As such, relative to an analog archiving system, a digital archiving system may need to move a huge amount of data very frequently.

“Another issue relates to the cost of keeping digital data storage media up to date. Each time when an old digital archiving system becomes out of date (e.g., system obsolete) and/or when an old digital data storage medium expires (e.g., software obsolete, format obsolete, or end of life), a massive amount of electronic documents may need to be migrated to a new digital archiving system or a new digital data storage medium. Compared to analog data storage media, digital data storage media can be very expensive and hence the cost of preserving documents on digital data storage media can be very high relative to the cost of preserving documents on analog data storage media.

“Yet another issue relates to the need to verify and ensure that each document (in the massive amount of documents that need to be migrated) has not been modified during migration. Skilled artisans appreciate that migration of a document from one electronic data storage device to another may unavoidably involve data conversion of some sort. Furthermore, certain information such as timestamp may be automatically added to the document. Unlike analog archiving systems, such alterations are usually not visible to and/or not easily discoverable by human users.

“An analog archiving system stores an actual image of the original data, so it is easy to view and requires no software to decode the data stored thereon. The archived information cannot be modified and can be read and instantly comprehensible to those who are literate in the language of the archived information. The only equipment needed is a reader machine with a magnifying glass. This eliminates the issue of obsolescence discussed above.

“Analog archiving systems, however, are not without drawbacks. For example, reader machines used to view microforms are often difficult to use, requiring users to carefully wind and rewind until they have arrived at the point where the data they are looking for is stored. There is not an automated way to search and retrieve microforms.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent: “An object of this disclosure is to provide an integrated digital-analog archiving solution that takes advantages of analog archiving systems as well as digital archiving systems, making it cheaper to store documents for a long time while providing the abilities to verify and search the stored documents.

“This and other objects can be achieved through embodiments of systems, methods and computer program products disclosed herein. For example, in some embodiments, a method may comprise an integrated digital-analog archiving system initiating a migration process to move a large volume of electronic documents from at least one digital (non-transitory) data storage medium to analog data storage media such as microforms or, particularly, microfilms.

“In some embodiments, the migration process may be performed by a rendering module of the integrated digital-analog archiving system. The render module may, for each document to be migrated, retrieve the document from a digital data storage medium, extract metadata, determine size, orientation, and format of the document, generate a first indicator for indicating the start of the document on a microfilm, generate a document identifier for identifying the document on the microfilm, generate a scaled (e.g., reduced) image of the document for the microfilm based on the size, orientation, and format of the document, generate technical text based on the metadata extracted from the document, generate a second indicator for indicating the end of the document on the microfilm, and render (e.g., translate or convert them for printing) the indicators, the document identifier, the scaled image of the document, and the technical information on the microfilm.

“In some embodiments, the integrated digital-analog archiving system may further include a retrieve module that is coupled to a media library where the microfilm is stored. The integrated digital-analog archiving system may maintain the identifier of the microfilm, the metadata extracted from the document, and positional information about the document. In some embodiments, responsive to a request to view the document, the retrieve module can locate the correct microfilm on which the document is stored, find the position number associated with the document, capture an image (e.g., utilizing a camera or scanner) of the microfilm at the position number, process the image, and determine whether the image correctly reflects the requested document. If the image is not correct, the retrieve module can reposition the microfilm by, for instance, moving the microfilm forward or backward, capture another image of the microfilm, and again process the image and determine whether the image correctly reflects the requested document. This process can be repeated until the correct image is found. Then, the retrieve module can take a final image which includes the document and the technical information (which is located proximate the document on the microfilm). The retrieve module processes the final image to generate an electronic file in the appropriate digital format and processes the technical information located proximate the document on the microfilm to generate metadata for the electronic file, and return the electronic file with the metadata to service the request.

“One embodiment comprises a system comprising a processor and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores computer instructions translatable by the processor to perform a method substantially as described herein. Another embodiment comprises a computer program product having a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores computer instructions translatable by a processor to perform a method substantially as described herein.

“Numerous other embodiments are also possible.

“These, and other, aspects of the disclosure will be better appreciated and understood when considered in conjunction with the following description and the accompanying drawings. It should be understood, however, that the following description, while indicating various embodiments of the disclosure and numerous specific details thereof, is given by way of illustration and not of limitation. Many substitutions, modifications, additions and/or rearrangements may be made within the scope of the disclosure without departing from the spirit thereof, and the disclosure includes all such substitutions, modifications, additions and/or rearrangements.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. An integrated digital-analog archiving system, comprising: a processor; a non-transitory computer readable medium; and stored instructions embodied on the non-transitory computer readable medium and translatable by the processor to perform: initiating a migration process to move a set of electronic documents to a media library, the set of electronic documents having associated metadata stored in a metadata database, the media library comprising a plurality of analog data storage media; and for each electronic document of the set of electronic documents: retrieving the electronic document from a digital data storage medium; extracting metadata from the electronic document; determining size, orientation, and format of the electronic document; generating a first indicator for indicating a start of the electronic document on an analog data storage medium; generating an analog document identifier for identifying the electronic document on the analog data storage medium; generating a scaled image of the electronic document for the analog data storage medium based on the size, orientation, and format of the electronic document; generating a text string based at least in part on the metadata extracted from the electronic document; generating a second indicator for indicating an end of the electronic document on the analog data storage medium; and generating an analog rendition of the electronic document including the first indicator, the analog document identifier, the scaled image of the electronic document, the text string, and the second indicator; and verifying that the electronic document has not been modified during the migration process, the verifying including comparing the metadata extracted from the electronic document with the metadata stored in the metadata database; wherein the stored instructions are further translatable by the processor for: locating an analog data storage medium in the media library; locating an analog rendition on the analog data storage medium; capturing an image of the analog rendition; processing the image of the analog rendition; determining whether the image correctly reflects a requested document; if the image does not correctly reflect the requested document, positioning the analog data storage medium and repeating the capturing, the processing, and the determining until a correct image that reflects the requested document is found; capturing a final image of the analog rendition, the final image including an analog document and analog metadata located proximate the analog document on the analog data storage medium; processing the final image of the analog rendition, the processing including generating an electronic file from the analog document and generating electronic metadata from the analog metadata; adding the electronic metadata to the electronic file; and returning the electronic file to service a request.

“2. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the migration process is automatically initiated in response to a predetermined condition or setting being met.

“3. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the digital data storage medium is embodied on a server machine communicatively connected to the media library over a network.

“4. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the digital data storage medium is embodied on a server machine external or local to the integrated digital-analog archiving system.

“5. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the analog data storage medium comprises a film, microfilm, microfiche, or paper.

“6. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the stored instructions are translatable by the processor to perform: generating a digital timestamp; and adding an analog version of the digital timestamp to the text string so as to record a time when the scaled image of the electronic document is stored on the analog data storage medium.

“7. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein locating the analog rendition of the document on the analog data storage medium comprises detecting a start marker on the analog data storage medium.

“8. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the electronic file is generated in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF).

“9. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the analog metadata comprises a timestamp that records a time when the analog document was stored on the analog data storage medium and wherein the electronic metadata added to the electronic file comprises an electronic version of the timestamp.

“10. The integrated digital-analog archiving system of claim 1, wherein the analog document identifier comprises a bar code.

“11. A computer program product for integrated digital-analog archiving, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions translatable by a processor to perform: initiating a migration process to move a set of electronic documents to a media library, the set of electronic documents having associated metadata stored in a metadata database, the media library comprising a plurality of analog data storage media; and for each electronic document of the set of electronic documents: retrieving the electronic document from a digital data storage medium; extracting metadata from the electronic document; determining size, orientation, and format of the electronic document; generating a first indicator for indicating a start of the electronic document on an analog data storage medium; generating an analog document identifier for identifying the electronic document on the analog data storage medium; generating a scaled image of the electronic document for the analog data storage medium based on the size, orientation, and format of the electronic document; generating a text string based at least in part on the metadata extracted from the electronic document; generating a second indicator for indicating an end of the electronic document on the analog data storage medium; and generating an analog rendition of the electronic document including the first indicator, the analog document identifier, the scaled image of the electronic document, the text string, and the second indicator; and verifying that the electronic document has not been modified during the migration process, the verifying including comparing the metadata extracted from the electronic document with the metadata stored in the metadata database; wherein the stored instructions are further translatable by the processor for: locating an analog data storage medium in the media library; locating an analog rendition on the analog data storage medium; capturing an image of the analog rendition; processing the image of the analog rendition; determining whether the image correctly reflects a requested document; if the image does not correctly reflect the requested document, positioning the analog data storage medium and repeating the capturing, the processing, and the determining until a correct image that reflects the requested document is found; capturing a final image of the analog rendition, the final image including an analog document and analog metadata located proximate the analog document on the analog data storage medium; processing the final image of the analog rendition, the processing including generating an electronic file from the analog document and generating electronic metadata from the analog metadata; adding the electronic metadata to the electronic file; and returning the electronic file to service a request.

“12. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein the stored instructions are translatable by the processor to perform: generating a digital timestamp; and adding an analog version of the digital timestamp to the text string so as to record a time when the scaled image of the electronic document is stored on the analog data storage medium.

“13. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein locating the analog rendition of the document on the analog data storage medium comprises detecting a start marker on the analog data storage medium.

“14. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein the analog metadata comprises a timestamp that records a time when the analog document was stored on the analog data storage medium and wherein the electronic metadata added to the electronic file comprises an electronic version of the timestamp.

“15. The computer program product of claim 11, wherein the analog document identifier comprises a bar code.

“16. A method for integrated digital-analog archiving, comprising: initiating, by a server machine, a migration process to move a set of electronic documents to a media library, the set of electronic documents having associated metadata stored in a metadata database, the media library comprising a plurality of analog data storage media, the server machine communicatively connected to the media library over a network; and performing, by a rendering module embodied on the server machine, for each electronic document of the set of electronic documents: retrieving the electronic document from a digital data storage medium; extracting metadata from the electronic document; determining size, orientation, and format of the electronic document; generating a first indicator for indicating a start of the electronic document on an analog data storage medium; generating an analog document identifier for identifying the electronic document on the analog data storage medium; generating a scaled image of the electronic document for the analog data storage medium based on the size, orientation, and format of the electronic document; generating a text string based at least in part on the metadata extracted from the electronic document; generating a second indicator for indicating an end of the electronic document on the analog data storage medium; and generating an analog rendition of the electronic document including the first indicator, the analog document identifier, the scaled image of the electronic document, the text string, and the second indicator; and verifying that the electronic document has not been modified during the migration process, the verifying including comparing the metadata extracted from the electronic document with the metadata stored in the metadata database; the method further comprising: performing, by a retrieve module embodied on the server machine: locating an analog data storage medium in the media library; locating an analog rendition on the analog data storage medium; capturing an image of the analog rendition; processing the image of the analog rendition; determining whether the image correctly reflects a requested document; if the image does not correctly reflect the requested document, positioning the analog data storage medium and repeating the capturing, the processing, and the determining until a correct image that reflects the requested document is found: capturing a final image of the analog rendition, the final image including an analog document and analog metadata located proximate the analog document on the analog data storage medium; processing the final image of the analog rendition, the processing including generating an electronic file from the analog document and generating electronic metadata from the analog metadata; adding the electronic metadata to the electronic file; and returning the electronic file to service a request.

“17. The method of claim 16, further comprising: generating a digital timestamp; and adding an analog version of the digital timestamp to the text string so as to record a time when the scaled image of the electronic document is stored on the analog data storage medium.

“18. The method of claim 16, wherein locating the analog rendition of the document on the analog data storage medium comprises detecting a start marker on the analog data storage medium.

“19. The method of claim 16, wherein the analog metadata comprises a timestamp that records a time when the analog document was stored on the analog data storage medium and wherein the electronic metadata added to the electronic file comprises an electronic version of the timestamp.

“20. The method of claim 16, wherein the analog document identifier comprises a bar code.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Specht, Matthias. Integrated Digital-Analog Archiving Systems And Methods For Document Preservation. U.S. Patent Number 10,515,050, filed July 5, 2016, and published online on January 6, 2020. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10,515,050.PN.&OS=PN/10,515,050RS=PN/10,515,050

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