JPH08314963A - Information retrieving method and information using method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To unnecessitate the retrieval keyword selecting work, to shorten the retrieval time and to reduce the retrieval omission. CONSTITUTION: Data to be a register object is read by an image scanner 1 and transferred to an image file text converting device 2. The device converts a prescribed page of data into text data as retrieval information. A work station 3 stores whole data in an optical image storage device 5 and also stores retrieval information in a high-speed read/write storage device 4. At the time of a retrieval later, retrieval information stored in the high-speed read/write storage device 4 becomes the retrieval object so that the retrieval time is shortened. A part of data becomes retrieval information as it is, so that keyword selecting work is unnecessitated and the retrieval omission is also reduced.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method for retrieving desired information from information stored in information storage means, and more particularly to a method for retrieving information by a searcher using a specific keyword.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Considering the construction of a plant, for example, a huge amount of documents such as design materials are created during development. Even in the case of nuclear facilities, there are some cases in which the number of reports reaches hundreds and the number of pages reaches hundreds of thousands.
Therefore, when constructing a new facility, it is necessary to search for the required material from the enormous amount of material that has already been created in an appropriate and short time.

Conventionally, the following methods have been generally used to retrieve information. That is, when registering information such as a material in a database or the like, the registrant determines a keyword or a material code (hereinafter referred to as “keyword or the like”) that represents the content of the material, and registers the keyword or the like in association with the material. On the other hand, at the time of search, a searcher searches for materials using keywords that clearly indicate the contents of information that he or she himself needs, and extracts desired information from the materials that match the keywords.

[0004]

However, according to the above method, it is necessary to select a keyword in advance when registering a material. Here, since the keywords and the like have a great influence on the subsequent search efficiency, they have to be selected carefully.
That is, a person who selects a keyword or the like has to grasp the content of the material sufficiently and then appropriately extract words that directly express the content of the material. For this reason, (1) a certain amount of time is absolutely necessary for selecting keywords, etc., and (2)
Even if a certain amount of time is given to the selection of keywords and the like, if there are omissions in the selection, problems such as hindering subsequent searches occur.

A further problem is when a new search system is constructed when a certain amount of material already exists. That is, it is relatively easy for the person who created the material to select the keywords and the like, and when the person registers the keywords and the like at the same time as the registration, a great deal of labor is not required. On the other hand, when a new search system is constructed for materials that have already been stored, the work of selecting keywords and the like will occur later. Therefore, inconvenience arises in terms of human resources having the ability to understand the contents of materials, labor, and time required for construction.

Although the above is a problem in registration, another problem occurs in a search. That is, since the keywords and the like are usually stored in the same file device together with the material, the time required for the search depends on the access speed of the file device. In order to register a large amount of materials, a large capacity file device must be adopted,
If a high access speed is required for this device, the cost of the entire system is unavoidably increased. In this case, there is no room for compromise in capacity, and of course, access speed must be compromised. As a result, it is very difficult to significantly reduce the search time.

Further, a problem occurs even after the search. In other words, when a new material is created on a workstation based on the searched material, the usual search system lacks consideration for effective use of the material, and it takes a lot of time and labor for typing and drawing the material. ing.

[Object of the Present Invention] The present invention has been made in view of these problems, and its objects are (1) a normal file device for registering materials (hereinafter referred to as "first storage means").
Separately from the above), a second storage unit having an access speed faster than that of the first storage unit is provided, and the information for retrieval is stored in the second storage unit.
The search time is shortened by registering it in the storage means, and (2) at the time of registering the material, by registering a part of the material as it is in the second storage means as the search information, the keyword etc. By eliminating the labor and time required for selection, and (3) creating an image of the material database and using the data conversion function and data cut / paste function to effectively use the registered materials. The point is to greatly reduce the labor required to create new materials.

[0009]

In order to achieve the above object, the information retrieval method of the present invention is a method for retrieving desired information from the information stored in the information storage means. When defined as the first storage means, a second storage means having an access speed faster than that of the first storage means is provided,
When the information is registered in the first storage means, a step of registering a part of the information in the second storage means as the search information, and when the information needs to be searched, the first storage means is replaced with the first storage means. And a step of performing a search on the two storage means and specifying a location where desired information is stored in the first storage means from the result of the search.

Further, in the present invention, the information registered in the first storage means is a material consisting of an arbitrary number of pages, and the search information registered in the second storage means is the content of a predetermined page of the material. It is characterized by being.

Further, in the present invention, the registration of the information in the first storage means is performed in the image data format, and the second storage means is used.
Information is registered in the storage means in a text data format converted from image data.

Further, the present invention is a method of using image data specified as a result of a search, wherein a step of converting a portion of the image data required as a document into text data, and cutting and pasting a portion required as a drawing. It includes a step of performing attachment processing.

[0013]

According to the present invention having the above structure, when information is registered in the first storage means, a part of the information is registered in the second storage means as search information. Then, when it becomes necessary to search for information, the second storage means is searched instead of the first storage means, and the storage location of the information required by the searcher in the first storage means from the result of this search. Is specified.

Further, according to the present invention, the material having an arbitrary number of pages is registered in the first storage means, and the content of the predetermined page of the material is registered as it is as the search information in the second storage means.

Further, according to the present invention, the information is registered in the image data format in the first storage means, while the information is registered in the text data format converted from the image data in the second storage means. be registered. At this time, the text data is searched and the desired image data is specified.

Further, according to the present invention, of the image data specified as described above, a portion required as a document is converted into text data, and a portion required as a drawing is cut out and pasted.

[0017]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT A preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

Example 1. FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the configuration of a search system to which the information search method according to the first embodiment is applied. In the figure, the material to be registered is optically read by the image scanner 1. The read material undergoes necessary conversion in the image file text conversion device 2 and is input to the workstation 3.

The workstation 3 controls the entire system, and specifically, the optical image storage device 5 to which the material is registered and a high-speed read / write operation in which a part of the material is registered as search information. The mold storage device 4 and the printer 6 for outputting the retrieved contents are controlled. The search system realized by these configurations is connected to the network with the workstation 3 as a node, and can search for necessary information from any network search terminal 7.

The operation of this system having the above configuration will be described.

First, a material having an arbitrary number of pages is optically read by the image scanner 1. Assuming that the number of pages of the material is large, it is desirable that the image scanner 1 has an automatic feeding mechanism and a reading number counter. The read material is transferred to the image file text conversion device 2. This device performs the following two processes according to the instruction from the workstation 3. That is,
The entire material is sent as image data to the workstation 3 in a non-converted state, and a predetermined page of the material is converted into text data as search information and sent to the workstation 3.

The workstation 3 stores the entire material in the form of image data as it is in the optical image storage device 5, and stores the retrieval information converted into text data in the high speed read / write type storage device 4. When the search is performed later, the search information stored in the high-speed read / write type storage device 4 becomes the search target.

The predetermined page to be stored in the high speed read / write type storage device 4 should be selected according to the format of the material. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of the format of the material. In this material, the title, outline and table of contents of the material are posted on the first page. Since it is generally considered that important keywords are included in the outline, in the case of this format, the first page of the material may be the predetermined page. In this case, the workstation 3 instructs the image file text conversion device 2 to convert the first page of the material.

Since the first page converted in this way is stored in the high-speed read / write type storage device 4 as it is, it is possible to store the search information without selecting the keyword.

The reason why data is stored in the high-speed read / write type storage device 4 as a text file is that later retrieval can be easily performed on the text data. On the other hand, when the material is registered in the optical image storage device 5 in the state of the original image data, the material includes a drawing,
This is because it is often not suitable for text conversion, such as handwriting. Here, as the optical image storage device 5, it is desirable to employ one having an automatic change mechanism. With this mechanism, the materials can be classified and stored in a plurality of optical disks, so that the material images can be efficiently retrieved in the subsequent retrieval.

Next, how the searcher searches for desired information will be described.

First, the searcher determines a keyword that directly shows the necessary information. Next, the arbitrary network search terminal 7 instructs the workstation 3 to search for information based on the key keyword. The workstation 3 extracts all the search information including this keyword from the high-speed read / write type storage device 4, and specifies the original material corresponding to the search information. After this, the workstation 3 transfers the identified material to the optical image storage device 5.
From the network search terminal 7 and sends it to the network search terminal 7 having the searcher. At this time, for the convenience of the system user, the screen of the workstation 3 may be divided and the search information (text data) and the actual material (image data) may be displayed at the same time.

When there are a plurality of candidate materials,
The titles of these materials may be sent in the form of a list. The searcher who receives the transmission instructs the workstation 3 from the candidates for the material that needs to be referred to, and obtains the desired information. At this time, the searcher may output the content of the desired material from the printer 6.

The above is the outline of the first embodiment relating to the information retrieval method.

According to this embodiment, since it is not necessary to select a keyword or the like when registering a material, it is possible to reduce the labor and time required even when a new search system is constructed. You can Further, since the search information is stored in the storage device having a high access speed, the time required for the search can be shortened. Moreover, since the search information may be a part of the original material, the capacity of this storage device can be optimized.

Further, according to the present embodiment, since the entire predetermined page describing the outline of the material is stored as the search information, it is possible to eliminate the omission of the search due to the omission of the selection of the keyword or the like.

Example 2. According to the first embodiment, it is possible to improve the efficiency of search. However, it is necessary to consider how to effectively use this material. In the second embodiment, an information use method of taking in the retrieved material and creating a new material will be described.

The second embodiment uses the retrieval system having the same configuration as the first embodiment. That is, the material is stored in the optical image storage device 5 in the form of image data. Therefore, the searcher first captures the document data by the following procedure.

1. 1. Instruct the workstation 3 via the network where the document needs to be as a document. 2. The workstation 3 uses the image file text conversion device 2 to convert the necessary portions into text data. The workstation 3 receives the converted data and sends it to the network search terminal 7.

After that, the searcher may activate document editing software such as a word processor in his terminal to edit the text data. Depending on the case, the material may be received as image data and the necessary portions may be converted into texts on the terminal.

On the other hand, when a drawing other than a document, a table, a graph, a photograph and the like (these are simply referred to as "drawings", which are to be interchanged throughout this specification), once the image data is received, Just cut and paste at the terminal. At this time, drawing software or word processor software having drawing / drawing functions is used.

As described above, according to the information use method of the second embodiment, it is very easy to create or edit a new material based on the material already registered.

[0038]

As described above in detail, according to the information retrieval method of the present invention, the initial retrieval of information is performed on the storage device having a high access speed, so that the information retrieval time can be shortened. .

Further, according to the present invention, since the predetermined page of the material is registered as it is as the search information, it is not necessary to select the keyword at the time of registration. At this time, the problem of omission of keyword selection can be solved.

Further, according to the present invention, since the entire material is registered in the form of image data, it is possible to easily register the material which is difficult to turn into a text such as a drawing or a handwritten document at the time of registration. On the other hand, since the search information is registered as text data, it is possible to reduce the amount of data and improve the search efficiency.

Further, according to the information utilizing method of the present invention, the portion of the specified image data required as a document is converted into text data, and the portion required as a drawing is cut out. As a result, text data can be edited with a normal word processor,
On the other hand, the drawing can be taken into the document as it is. Therefore, a new material can be efficiently created and the information can be effectively used.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a search system to which an information search method according to a first embodiment is applied.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a format example of a material.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 image scanner, 2 image file text conversion device, 3 workstation, 4 high speed read / write type storage device, 5 optical image storage device, 6 printers,
7 Network search terminal.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A method for retrieving desired information from information stored in an information storage means, wherein when the information storage means is defined as a first storage means, a second access speed faster than that of the first storage means. A storage means is provided, and when information is registered in the first storage means, a part of the information is registered as search information in the second storage means, and when the information needs to be searched, Instead, a search is made to the second storage means, and the location where the desired information is stored in the first storage means is specified from the result of this search. 2. The information search method according to claim 1, wherein the information registered in the first storage means is a material consisting of an arbitrary number of pages, and the search information registered in the second storage means is An information retrieval method characterized in that the content is on a predetermined page of the material. 3. The information search method according to claim 1, wherein the information is registered in the first storage means in an image data format, and the information is registered in the second storage means from image data. An information retrieving method characterized by performing conversion in a converted text data format and retrieving text data to specify desired image data. 4. A method of using image data specified by the information search method according to claim 3, wherein a portion of the image data required as a document is converted into text data and required as a drawing. A method of using information, characterized in that information is edited by cutting and pasting points.