Microfilm is evidentiary by statute is every court in the land and it will
stand up in court provided the original does not exist upon which time the
film is deemed the copy of record. The media is persistent, not subject to
technological changes and has national standards to protect it's integrity.
 
Digital images are being accepted as evidentiary by case law at this time
and it is recommended that you maintain the original hard copy or film it as
your copy of record while using the digital image for your working copy. 
Digital media is not persistent, subject to technological changes and there
are no national standards to protect it's integrity.
 
Why? As Kathleen discussed, the migration of the data due to software or
hardware changes is not being done with diligence.  The images can be
changed easily and there are no national standard for digital format and
probably won't be due to the potential of creating a monopoly in this high
growth market.  So the only thing for the market to do to assure the ability
to share information is to decide for itself what formats it is going to
support but that has no lasting bearing on the courts. 
 
So what is so wrong with the digital information being accepted by courts
but not supported with a statute - Remember the recent uproar over the death
penalty where it was determined by the Supreme Court that our constitution
provided that a person could only be sentence to death by a jury of their
peers which threw over 800 current death row cases back into the court
system because the person had been sentence to death by a judge? What
happens once a case is being argued with digital images and someone can
prove the image had been altered and no longer accurately represented the
original document - we stand the chance in the Records Management industry
that all our hard work to create and protect our information digitally is no
longer acceptable to defend our positions - looks pretty risky to me!  
 
Until AINSI is willing to set standards I am unwilling to deem those images
anything but convenient. 
 
I applaud the hybrid solution as the optimal solution at this time to create
evidentiary archival microfilm to address the storage problems in that film
saves 95% of the space required by hard copy and allows for the destruction
of the hard copy while using digital images to aid in the efficient
retrieval and distribution of high volumes of information.  When we know the
industry statistics are that only 5-15% of information will ever be accessed
again I still balk at mass conversion of backlogs to digital media
preferring to suggest that a digital microfilm reader printer that allows
for on-demand digitizing of records on film is more cost effective over the
life cycle of the information.  Digital conversion only saves an additional
4% of space but carries a significantly higher cost to create due to the
meta-data required for retrieval, the on-going never ending cost of
migration to the new technologies in order to assure retrieval and lack of
persistence in the storage media resulting in a much higher risk on all
fronts.  
 
Once again it is a case of our technology evolving faster than we have the
ability to manage it!
 
 
Janie Wait, CRM, MBA
President
Director of Marketing
Intermountain Record Center, Inc
3765 Airport Parkway, Casper, WY 82604
PO Box 2770, Mills, WY 82644
 307-265-9553
 307-237-8225
 [log in to unmask]
 www.intermountainrecords.com

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance