Interactive Paper as a Reading Medium in Digital Libraries

In digital libraries, much of the reading activity is still done on printed copies of documents. We show how digital pen and paper technologies can be used to support readers by automatically creating interactive paper versions of digital documents during the printing process that enable users to activate embedded hyperlinks to other documents and services from printed versions. The approach uses a special printer driver that allows information about hyperlinks to be extracted and stored at print time. Users can then activate hyperlinks in the printed document with a digital pen.