Archival information storage on optical medium in human and machine readable format

摘要

A system and method for storing documents in human and machine readable format. A laser scanner is used to write de-magnified visual copies and digital records of the documents in an optical recording medium. A table of contents and record headers are provided to ease document retrieval. The optical recording medium is made of materials which can be written directly by the laser scanner without the need for post-writing processing. The direct write characteristic allows immediate retrieval, and allows additional documents to be added to the optical recording medium at later times. The documents are retrieved from the optical recording medium by either magnifying the visual copies or by regenerating the documents in visual form using the digital information.