AIIM: Association for Information and Image Management. Trade association and professional society for the micrographics, optical disk and electronic image management markets. Algorithm: Prescribed set of mathematical steps which is used to solve a problem or conduct an operation. Aliasing: Condition when graphics, either constructed with lines (vectored) or dots (bit mapped), show jagged edges under magnification. Analog: Comes from the word "analogous," meaning "similar to." Analog means recreating the continuous nature of the original "thing"; it is the opposite of digital, which translates the original happening into ones and zeros. ANSI: American National Standards Institute. A standards-setting, non-government organization, which develops and publishes standards for "voluntary" use in the United States. API: Application Program Interface. Generic term for any language and format used by one program to help it communicate with another program. ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The most popular coding method used by small computers for converting letters, numbers, punctuation and control codes into digital form. Audit trail: Record of activity that has occurred in a certain file, or on a certain computer. Back up: A duplicate copy of data placed in a separate, safe "place" - to guard against total loss in the event the original data somehow becomes inaccessible. Backbone: Part of the communications network which carries the heaviest traffic. Backfile conversion: The process of scanning in, indexing and storing a large backlog of documents on an imaging system. Bandwidth: The range of frequencies that can be passed through a channel. A channel carrying digital information has a data rate proportional to its bandwidth. Bar Code: A system of portraying data in a series of machine-readable lines of varying widths Baud: A unit of data transmission speed. Bilevel: A binary scan that assigns each pixel an attribute of either black or white - no gray tones, no colors. Bit: Binary digit. The smallest unit of data a computer can process, one of two conditions: on or off; 1 or 0. Electronic Document Imaging Page 1 of 5 UTB/TSC Records Management
Bit map: Representation of characters or graphics by individual pixels, or points of light arranged in row (horizontal) and column (vertical) order. Bps: Bits Per Second. Measurement of the number of bits transferred in a data communications system. Measures speed. Buffer: Allocated memory space used for temporary storage. Bus: Signal path shared by many circuits or devices. Byte: Eight bits of information. Generally eight bits (one byte) equals one character. Cache: Small portion of high speed memory used for temporary storage of frequently used data. C C D: Charge-Coupled device. A type of digital camera technology in which the image is focused on an array of sensing pixels. CCITT: International Telephone and Telegraph Consultative Committee. Issues recommendations that are adopted by standards. CD-ROM: Compact Disk Read Only Memory Compound document: File that has more than one element (text, graphics, voice, video) mixed together. Compression: A software or hardware process that "shrinks" images so they occupy less storage space, and can be transmitted faster and easier. D A S D: Direct Access Storage Device. Any on-line data storage device. Data dictionary: A central repository that contains the definitions and descriptions of all of the system data structures. Device driver: Small programs that tell the computer how to communicate with particular types of peripheral devices. Digital: The use of binary code to record information. Advantages over analog are: ease in manipulation and accuracy in transmission. Dithering: Simulating gray tones by altering the size, arrangement or shape of background dots. DPI: Dots Per Inch. A measurement of output device resolution and quality. Fiber optic cable: Cable made from thin strands of glass through which data in the form of light pulses is transmitted. Excellent, but very expensive, for very high speed transmission over medium to long distances. Electronic Document Imaging Page 2 of 5 UTB/TSC Records Management
File: All the data that describes one document or image, maintained under a single naming code and stored in a computer or in a storage medium. File server: The file server is the machine on the LAN where the shared software is stored. Full text search: The ability to search text files for occurrences of certain words, digits, sentences or patterns of characters. Gigabyte: Over a billion bytes or a thousand megabytes. Gray scale: The range of shades of black an image has. Halftone: A graphic, usually created from a photograph, in which dots are used to represent continuous tones. ISO: International Standards Organization. Image processor: Device that takes input data and changes it into the proper format for an imaging device - printer, display, etc. Imaging: Recording "human-readable" images - pictures, images, motion, text, etc. - into "machinereadable" formats - computer data. Index: A descriptive set of data associated with a document for locating the document's storage location. JPEG: Proposed standard for still image compression. Jukebox: A device that holds multiple optical disks and one or more disk drive, and can swap disks in and out of the drive as needed. Kbyte: Kilobyte. One thousand bytes (actually 1,024 bytes). LAN: Local Area Network. High speed transmissions over cables that connect computers and peripherals together at a distance of about 1 mile or less. Lossless: Image and data compression applications and algorithms that reduce the number of bits a picture would normally take up without losing any data. Lossy: Methods of image compression, such as JPEG, that reduce the size of an image by disregarding some pictorial information. Machine readable: Computer readable, i.e.. data on disks, tapes or in ASCII format, etc. Magneto-optical: A high-density, erasable recording method. Similar to magnetic disk and tape recording, but uses lasers to write and read the data. Electronic Document Imaging Page 3 of 5 UTB/TSC Records Management
Megabyte: Approximately one million bytes (1,048,576 bytes). MPEG: An image-compression scheme for full motion video proposed by the Motion Picture Experts Group. OCR: Optical Character Recognition. The ability of a scanner with the proper software to capture, recognize and translate printed alpha-numeric characters into machine readable text. Open System: "A system that implements sufficient open specifications for interfaces, services, and supporting formats to enable image processing applications to be ported with minimal changes across a wide range of systems, can interoperate with other applications on local and remote systems, and can interact with users in a style that facilitates access and maintenance of public records on such systems." Pixel: An acronym (sort of) for Picture Element. When an image is defined by many tiny dots, those dots are pixels. Port: The channel in a computer used for input and output to a peripheral device. RAM: Random Access Memory. The primary memory in a computer, can be overwritten with new information. Raster graphics: A set of pixels or dots in a column and row format. Record: The definition of a state/local record includes records in electronic format. Section 441.031 of the Texas Government Code defines a government record as "a document, book, paper, photograph, sound recording or other material, regardless of physical form or characteristic, made or received by a state department or institution according to law or in connection with the transaction of official state business." Refresh: The phosphors at each pixel of a CRT which are stimulated by a charge from an electron glow only briefly. They must be renewed frequently in order for the image to appear stable. Refresh rate is a measure of how often the image on the CRT is redrawn. Resolution: Measure of how much detail may be captured and shown. The 'higher the resolution, the more dots per inch (dpi) required and the higher amount of storage needed. Retrieval key: A word, number or phrase associated with a document to aid in its retrieval from storage. Sometimes called descriptors. ROM; Read Only Memory Data stored in a medium that allows it to be accessed but not erased or altered. Scaling: Process of uniformly changing the size of characters or-graphics. SCSI Small Computer System Interface: An industry standard for connecting peripheral devices and their controllers to a microprocessor. Electronic Document Imaging Page 4 of 5 UTB/TSC Records Management
Server: A computer which is dedicated to one task. Terabyte: Approximately one trillion bytes (1,024 gigabytes). Text file: A data file consisting of alphanumeric characters, defined by a text format such as ASCII. Threshold: A predefined level set into a scanner's software to determine whether a pixel will be represented as black or white. TIFF: Tagged Image File Format A bit map file format for describing and storing color and gray scale images. Vector Images: defined by sets of straight lines, defined by the locations of the end points 1 VGA: Video Graphics Array. Standard IBM video display standard. Provides medium-resolution text and graphics. Winchester disk: The common version of the sealed hard disk. Workflow system: An imaging system that concentrates on automating the processing of documents scheduling processing, routing documents automatically among users and tracking document status. Workstation: A single user microcomputer usually one that is dedicated to a single type of task (graphics, CAD, etc.) W O R M: Write Once Read Many. Optical storage device on which data is recorded and cannot be altered. Electronic Document Imaging Page 5 of 5 UTB/TSC Records Management