Maskinleselighet

Maskinleselighet refers to the quality of data or a document that allows it to be processed and understood by a computer without human intervention. This concept is crucial in fields like data management, digital archiving, and information retrieval. For data to be machine-readable, it must follow a structured format that machines can parse. This often involves using standardized formats such as CSV, XML, JSON, or specific database schemas.

Documents can achieve machine-readability through various means. Plain text files are inherently machine-readable. However, scanned documents, often in image formats like JPEG or TIFF, are not directly machine-readable. To make these machine-readable, optical character recognition (OCR) technology is employed to convert the image of text into machine-encoded text. Similarly, PDF documents can vary in their machine-readability. A "searchable PDF" generated through OCR is more machine-readable than a "flat image PDF."

The benefits of machine-readability are significant. It enables automated data analysis, efficient searching and filtering of large datasets, and the seamless integration of information across different systems. It is a foundational requirement for many modern digital processes, ensuring that information can be accessed, processed, and utilized effectively by both humans and machines.