Wow. Excellent discussion.  Being the one who started all this, I began 
asking these same questions so its good to see myself validated by others.

My  comments:

To stamp or not, that is the question
Going beyond the pure notion of whether to even use the stamp, as many are 
discussing, is the question of how its used within an organization.

Each organization sets their own standards for when its appropriate to stamp 
"Best Available Copy".  But it really comes down to a "personal" 
interpretation by each individual worker and each uses their judgment 
differently.  Some folks on our team are over zealous while others are 
"stamp shy".   Then we have end users who range from the Stamp Nazi who 
wants everything that was not stamped to be stamped and rescanned to the 
purest who doesn't want any of his originals "violated" with a stamp.   What 
this really points out is that this is a human problem, not a technological 
one.

Appropriate uses
One appropriate use of the stamp that I did not see discussed, is for images 
that don't look whole. I.e., the original paper copy had a subset of 
information for some reason.  We have a lot of these, where a photo copy of 
a partial drawing or whatever was made and while its obvious when you hold 
the 8 1/2 x 11 paper in your hand, its not when view it as an image. Without 
the stamp we get called back to verify.

With the quality of our scanner and software, I have yet to see a need for 
the stamp other than the reason above. Some even claim that the scanned 
version is even better than the original but now we are getting into a murky 
area where we could be accused of "adding" information... a completely 
different topic, one which I will leave alone.



===
Howard Furst
infocare Inc.





>From: "Jones, Virginia" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Records Management Program <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [RM] Doc Scanning : how to best indicate original doc was of 
>poor quality
>Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:27:35 -0500
>
>Users of the images will want to know - by image - why they can't read
>something or why something is faint or fuzzy.  Making a policy statement
>regarding quality is fine for the overall business process, but not for
>individuals using the images.  Also, in some cases, the court or an
>attorney or adjudicator are going to want to know that the specific poor
>quality image was verified to be the result of poor quality original,
>and not the results of poor imaging practices covered by a high level
>policy statement.  One other point - if the image quality is so poor as
>to render the image unreadable, it is far better to keep that particular
>original and not destroy it.  Several reasons:
>  - sometimes it is possible, with effort, to read some content on the
>original that just does not show up on the scanned image
>  - at some point in the future there may be improved or different
>technology that will allow the production of a more legible image from
>the original
>  - some specific uses of or regulations governing the record may require
>the original to be produced if the image is of insufficient quality
>
>Ginny Jones
>(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI)
>Records Manager
>Information Technology Division
>Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities
>Newport News, VA
>[log in to unmask]
>
>List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
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