Hello everybody.  I have a question as usual!  I'm just thinking some of
you have probably already dealt with this type situation so thought I'd
see if anyone might share their experience with me.

 

In my organization, The University of West Florida, we will eventually
(next year or so) be implementing electronic imaging in our Registrar's
Office for Student Records.  We're in the process of writing the
proposal, etc for imaging/document management software and hardware.  To
date...we've been microfilming these records....actually doing a backlog
of many years....and still have about 10 years records in hardcopy that
have not been microfilmed.  We plan to stop the microfilming soon.
Therefore we will still have this backlog to deal with.  Certainly we
aren't going to worry about what is already on microfilm because we can
deal with that (probably scanning the film, etc.) once we have a system
in place.  The problem is the hardcopy that is not on microfilm....the
backlog not on microfilm...that won't be microfilmed.  We won't be able
to continue to store it on-site since records will continue to
accumulate and the backlog will grow even larger causing us storage
problems.  Certainly we can contract for off-site, secure storage of the
hardcopy in the meantime....But, what I'm wondering is this....is it
feasible to go ahead and have a conversion (contracted) of these
hardcopy records to digital images (scanned) without knowing what
software and indexing format that we'd be using in the future when we
get a system inhouse?  I'm thinking we could end up with compatibility
issues...and at the very least have to "re-index" each image when we get
inhouse scanning and indexing software/document management software.

 

Any comments from those of you who have worked through this kind of
situation would be most appreciated.

 

Gus Harris

The Univ. of West FL

Pensacola, FL

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