Document Management Systems

[unixman_again]

Any recommendations? Our archivist has decided to step from the dungeon (literally!) and move the current paper records to electronic format. Scanning the paper to pdf is easy but we don't just want to dump them on to a shared drive. We want something to catergorise the docs and allow searches to be done to locate the one we want. They want it to be separate from the MIS and library systems too. There are a plethora of DMS's out there; any experiences both good and bad would be gratefully received.

 

Thanks.

[xenonive]

Strangely I was just looking on here for suggestions and saw this post so would like suggestions too

[unixman_again]

Answering my own question. There are loads of DMS available and here's the short list in ascending order of price. We are going to use OpenDocMan but if we had an unlimited budget we would go with either Swordfish or FileDirector

 

[table=width: 700, class: grid]

[tr]

[td]what[/td]

[td]pros[/td]

[td]cons[/td]

[td]references[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]shared drive[/td]

[td]free[/td]

[td]limited or no search facilites[/td]

[td][/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]OpenDocMan [/td]

[td]

• free
  
• on going development
  
• paid support is available
  

[/td]

[td]

• no sub categories
  
• can only search on entered data (not document contents)
  

[/td]

[td]OpenDocMan[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Joomla plugin[/td]

[td]

• we know Joomla
  
• cheap ($69 / €49)
  

[/td]

[td]

• can only search on entered data (not document contents)
  

[/td]

[td]

• Overview
  
• Demo
  

[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Paper Tiger [/td]

[td]

• cloud based
  
• no physical college resources used
  
• managed by someone else
  
• can be used to control physical items (paper)
  

[/td]

[td]

• data is stored offsite (may be this is a good feature)
  
• ongoing costs
  

[/td]

[td]Paper Tiger[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Swordfish[/td]

[td]

• college uses capita software
  
• very comprehensive
  

[/td]

[td]

• no doubt expensive
  

[/td]

[td]Capita Software and Managed Services - Swordfish[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]FileDirector[/td]

[td]

• very comprehensive
  
• excellent search facility (can search contents of documents)
  
• can scan documents straight to the system
  
• small business edition should be adequate
  

[/td]

[td]

• cost unknown (no doubt expensive)
  
• optional modules are required to enhance capability
  

[/td]

[td]FileDirector[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

[xenonive]

Having looked myself we are considering using Sharepoint Online via Office 365 as some of the Canon scanners software allow saving to Sharepoint Online and if its OCR pdf file would be searchable. Hope that helps you too. Thanks for your update.