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The following are examples of what is possible in the world of Exbiblio™.

Scenario #1: The Newspaper Meets Exbiblio

Imagine you are reading a newspaper during your commute to work. You see an article about a new medication that might help reduce your blood pressure and you want to find out more about the drug and then email the article to a few friends. Or you see an ad for a theater performance and would like to attend, you find a new investment opportunity to investigate or you read a review of a book you would like to buy.

Before Exbiblio, you might tear the article or ad out of the paper and tuck it away in your briefcase or your purse. Perhaps you type a reminder into your laptop or PDA. Maybe you write down the information on a scrap of paper or in a notebook. Or maybe you use a tape recorder or call your cell phone to leave yourself a voice note. Regardless of how you capture the information, it is likely to get lost or forgotten before you have an opportunity to follow-up. If you do eventually act on the information, you have to go through several steps, working your way through menus on your computer or voice prompts on your phone. Imagine how easy it would be if you had direct access to the digital world from your newspaper?

With Exbiblio, you have seamless, direct access to digital information and the world of the Internet. Imagine once again that you are reading your newspaper, but instead of tearing out an ad or article, writing a reminder or recording a voice message, you use your portable, hand-held scanner to capture just a snippet from the article or ad, swiping it across the text as if using a highlighter.

When you connect your Exbiblio scanner to the digital world -- for example, by wirelessly connecting to the "smart" phone or PDA you are carrying -- the Exbiblio solution instantly searches for the information you have captured, and digital versions of the paper document are found and stored. In addition to retrieving the article or ad, the Exbiblio solution offers you a menu of choices. If you're viewing an article you see selections like "email this article to a friend" and "view related articles" as well as any helpful, expanded content that the publisher, the system or a third party has associated with the article or the particular portion of the article you are reading. If you're viewing the ad you captured for the theater performance, you might choose "order tickets" from the Exbiblio solution menu or a link to a review of the performance contained in last week's edition of the paper (that you've already recycled). If you're taking a look at a book review, the Exbiblio solution connects you directly to your favorite online bookseller to place an order, lists books that readers of this book have also read or even tells you whether members of your book club have read this book. And you can do all of this either there on your commute or later in the evening when you are in front of your computer.

Scenario #2: Revamping Research and Writing

Imagine that you are a college student or a professor, and you are conducting research and writing a paper. You are mining several books for information, using a highlighter to note information in the books you own and typing notes from the library books into your laptop. During the process of conducting your research you find an outstanding bibliography, so you make notes of the sources you want to investigate. Later, you enter the references into a search engine from your computer to see if you can find summary information before trying to track down the documents. Then, you either order the books you want from your university library or place an order to buy them from your favorite online bookseller.

In the world of Exbiblio, you use your portable, hand-held scanner to "capture" sections you may want to use in the paper or to electronically highlight sections of the books you are reading. And when a thought of your own comes to mind, you capture the idea with your Exbiblio scanner because it is not only a scanner but also a voice recorder. The system then uploads your scans and voice and highlight annotations into your computer (automatically converting the voice notes to text), where you have direct access to digital originals of the books you want if they are available online. Your Exbiblio solution also provides links to related information, such as abstracts, bibliographies, books, articles and multimedia resources.

All of the information you locate online can then be stored in your Life Library^TM, a repository of information you capture and retrieve through the Exbiblio solution and other sources. As for the bibliography you found, you use your Exbiblio scanner to scan the titles of the documents you want to investigate to find the digital originals online or locate the books in a library. Finally, the system helps you automatically build the bibliography for your paper as it has stored the relevant information about all of the books you have scanned and the material you have copied.

Other Scenarios:

You are reading a story of somebody's travels through Italy and like the sound of one of the places they stayed. You scan a few words including the place name and you are offered a menu of choices -- show me a map, tell me the history of the town, book me a hotel room, show me some photos, translate the name into English -- as well as a special offer from an airline for discounted tickets to Italy.
You are a student reading the textbook for one of your courses and come to a passage you do not quite understand but think might be important. Scanning a few words links you to more detailed information, to an online forum where other students are discussing the topic, to annotations written by others or to a video of a lecture that explains it.
You come across a Latin phrase in the legal contract you are reading. You think you know what it means, but you are not entirely sure, and it might be rather important. A scan tells you the answer.
You have a copy of the minutes from a meeting and remember being told by one of the other people present that they were also available on the company's file server. But you cannot remember where. A quick scan and the document pops up on your computer screen.
You are on a business trip and will need to submit an expense report upon your return. Instead of trying to jot notes on your receipts you simply scan the place of business on each receipt and leave a voice notation that the system will automatically covert to text and associate with the capture from the receipt. When you return, you (or your assistant) can easily complete your report based on the information now stored (and organized) in your Life Library.

There are three points worth emphasizing as you consider the above examples. First, the same device can provide all of the above functions and many more; there is no need to carry a "Latin translation device" as well as a "theatre-ticket-purchasing device." Because the system uses Internet-based services, any service provided via the net (now or in the future) could become a resource for working with paper. Second, all of the above scans generate entries to your Life Library; you can come back and interact with them at any time in the future. And third, no changes to the printing or publishing of documents need to be made for all of the above rich features to become possible. This is in marked contrast to earlier systems that have depended on barcodes, special paper or novel printing techniques. Extra functionality, online communities, links to further material and so forth can be created for documents published 200 years ago just as easily as for those published today.