Direct entry without keyboarding

Wouldn't it be nice to put the title, author, publisher and other items of bibliographic information from a new acquisition into a computer without having to keyboard every character? A capability like that would bring changes in the way acquisitions are handled, but they might be beneficial changes. How about directly entering words and paragraphs from documents into a computer with the same ease that these items are now underlined or highlighted for data entry? That capability might have a considerable impact on the way abstract listings and bibliographies are produced.