Optical system for processing newspaper clippings

Abstract

Various institutes (e.g. economic and market research institutes) cannot do appropriate work without keeping pace with the most recent information included in the daily press. The handling of information taken out of newspapers in the form of clippings and its retrieval according to certain aspects from a large amount of material has become rather a wearisome work by means of the formerly as widely used filling methods. Processing clippings by means of optical coincidence cards has proven the most efficient method for a multi-dimensional and adequately deep analysis of a large amount of documents.

The paper describes and illustrates by practical examples the processing of clippings, as well as the designing of an adequate descriptor system, its use, the role and handling of optical coincidence cards, the collection, processing, and storage of clippings, and also outlines the way of retrieving. The paper concludes that processing by optical coincidence cards is also very feasible for continuous thematic surveying.