Patent ID: 7139977

Claim:
An method for composing a virtual book from a set of electronically stored documentation comprising multiple books, the method comprising: automatically and under computer control parsing said electronically stored documentation to gather meta-information representing physical attributes of said electronically stored documentation; automatically storing said meta-information in a database; automatically identifying a plurality of topics based on said meta-information and the chapter and section headings in the documentation, wherein each said topic is associated with a portion of the documentation; automatically determining a structure of the documentation, wherein said structure indicates a hierarchy of said topics within the documentation; automatically classifying each of said topics within one or more categories; receiving a subject for a virtual book; automatically using said topics and said meta-information to compose said virtual book to include a subset of said topics that are relevant to said subject, and each said relevant topic includes a pointer to said associated portion of the documentation, wherein the complete virtual book can be stored for future access.