DE2659042

1487507 Information retrieval INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP 29 Dec 1975 52965/75 Heading G4A Documents displayed at a work station (Fig. 1) are stored on, e.g. a disc file 12, together with selected identifiable portions of the documents, information being retrieved by displaying the identifiable portions and in response to the selection of one of the portions the whole or a larger part of the document being displayed. As described for a "paperless" office, each document is scanned by, e.g. an optical character reader and stored in a holding file in disc store 12 with a temporary document number which is added to the "in-tray" of selected users of the system. A user may display all the documents in his "in-tray" on a visual display unit 14 at his work station. The user may then (1) reject a document, (2) store it in a pending file in disc file 12 and/or (3) store it in permanent storage 13 together with indexing data to enable subsequent retrieval. Data is stored in the pending file by selecting one or more identifying strips which are transferred to a selected "wallet" file. To subsequently retrieve data from the pending file all the strips of a selected "wallet" file are displayed in response to a user operating the appropriate keys on a keyboard. When a strip belonging to the required document is recognized the user points to the strip with a light pen and presses a retrieve key, the associated document then being displayed. Further keys enable the preceding and following pages of the document to be displayed.