Papermerge DMS

Stacks of scanned paperwork are hard to search, and Papermerge DMS is built to fix that. It is an open-source document management system for digital archives that stores, organizes, and indexes scanned files in PDF, JPEG, and TIFF formats.

The code is licensed under Apache 2.0, so you can run it yourself and read how it works.

Papermerge DMS uses OCR to read the text in your scans, which feeds its full-text search.

You can also find documents through tags and metadata, which helps when a file name tells you nothing.

Custom fields and category management let you shape the archive around the kind of documents you keep, such as invoices, contracts, or letters.

Versioning keeps earlier copies of a document available, and page management lets you work with individual pages inside a file.

Everything is handled through a web interface, so there is no desktop client to install.

For a small office or a personal archive of scans, Papermerge DMS covers the basics of a paperless setup without a license fee.