Libraries, as we know, have always been keepers of knowledge—both past and present. But what happens when that knowledge is locked away in file cabinets, old scanned documents, or decades of paper-based reports and notices? That’s the challenge we faced in our library too.
We’ve had a growing pile of digitized content—meeting minutes, handwritten letters, internal circulars, scanned newspaper clippings—you name it. While scanning these into PDFs was a start, they weren’t really useful. Sure, they were “digital,” but they weren’t searchable. And for a library, that’s a big limitation.
That’s when I came across Paperless NGX.
What is Paperless NGX?
Paperless NGX is a free, open-source document management system. It’s designed to help organize, tag, and store documents in a way that’s both efficient and future-friendly. But what caught my attention—and eventually won me over—is its built-in OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capability.
This isn’t just some add-on. It’s part of the core experience. Once a document is uploaded—be it a PDF, a scanned image, or even a photo of a document—Paperless NGX quietly processes it using a tool called ocrmypdf.
And here’s the best part:
Even images converted into PDFs get a hidden text layer that becomes fully searchable.
Yes, even that scanned, handwritten note from 2005 with faded ink can be indexed and searched. That’s powerful.
Why It Matters for Libraries
For libraries, this changes everything. Many of us are working with physical archives—some of which have already been scanned, others waiting to be digitized. Until now, those scans were mostly just static images in a digital wrapper. We could store them, but searching through them meant opening files one by one.
With Paperless NGX, the workflow is different:
- Upload the document.
- It automatically runs OCR in the background.
- It becomes searchable by its actual content.
Is It Hard to Set Up?
Not at all. If you’re familiar with Docker, the developers have made it incredibly simple with an installation script. Within minutes, we had it running on a spare Ubuntu server. You just choose your database (SQLite works great for starters), set your folders, and it’s ready to go.
Of course, there’s room to grow:
- You can tag documents
- Organize by type or date
- Set up folders to automatically watch and import documents
- Even configure workflows and email-based imports
But even with the basic setup, it’s more than enough to start building a searchable digital archive.
If your library is thinking about building a digital archive, or if you’re sitting on a mountain of scanned files that no one really wants to open one by one, give Paperless NGX a try.
It’s not just about going paperless—it’s about making what you already have more useful, more accessible, and more alive.
Want help getting started? Feel free to reach out—I’d be happy to share tips from our own setup.
– Mahesh Palamuttath
