Patent US 5,909,690

An apparatus and method for page-retrieval for use with an electronic display, especially suited for so-called electronic books, wherein a current relative position of a current page of the book and the number of times a page has previously been displayed are graphically displayed. A document image is stored in a document image storage unit and the document image is displayed on a computer screen. A number of display times storage unit stores the number of times each page has been viewed by a user. A relative location image control unit determines the relative location within the book image of a currently displayed page and the electronic book is displayed on the screen showing a visual indication of the relative position of the currently displayed page. The pages of the electronic book are color shaded by a number of display times image generation unit to give a visual indication of the relative number of times each page has been displayed to allow frequently displayed pages to be quickly located by a user. A marker can also be displayed on the screen to indicate pages marked by a user.