CompuServe Thread

I'm looking for the best place to obtain introductory information about CD Rom drives and what's available in terms of hardware and software. The management of the bank I work for recently received some information from a company called Alared about an Image Conversion And Retrieval System which basically uses a flatbed scanner with a document feeder to convert paper documents into a combination of OCR / graphics and store them on CD Rom for later retrieval. The idea of being able to convert paper to CD Rom piqued the curiosity of some of the upper management and they've invited the company in to talk about their product. As micro manager it's my job to do a technical evaluation and to determine how it would fit into our current scheme of PC / Network hardware and software. My problem is that although I have an extensive background in networking and PC programming I've had no experience with CD Rom and I have some basic questions like would the CD Rom's that their system generates be readable by other manufactures CD Rom hardware / software, and what if any competing packages like this are available, can anyone here point me in the right direction? Thanks Much, Chris LeFebvre Micro Computer Manager Central Jersey Savings Bank