List, 
 
    Responses to a question in a records management/recordkeeping survey
we conduct annually show that 72% of respondents (88% of scientists and
engineers, but just over 50% of clerical and administrative staffs) now
say that they routinely keep and use their office records on electronic
media.  
 
    Most scientists use electronic media to create and use the data
associated with their research.  Many continue to support recordkeeping
within the traditional laboratory notebook format by pasting, stapling,
or taping printouts and photographs of data, experiment results, and
schematics within the pages of their notebooks.  But we have noted that
the number of lab notebooks charged out and returned has been declining
over the last 10 years at least, as has the number of pages within
individual notebooks that are actually filled with data.  Comments from
many scientists show that many of them find that it is increasingly
cumbersome and difficult to capture experimental data and notations into
paper bound notebooks, and fewer of them are able (even if they were
willing) to maintain both a desktop and a hardcopy record of their work.

 
    Anecdotal evidence gleaned from follow-up phone calls and random
conversations with clerical and support staffs show that they are
frustrated with the amount of paper copies of desktop information they
find themselves keeping.  They are increasingly willing to turn to their
desktops for the information they need to do do their work, and less
willing to keep large numbers of paper copies of information they never
use.  As Virginia Jones pointed out, there remain numbers of holdouts
who continue to hold onto their paper, but the trend in the direction of
electronic recordkeeping and away from manual processes with paper as
the primary recordkeeping medium is evident.  
 
    The fact that many support and admin personnel, including many who
are old enough to have learned their trade using typewriters and carbon
paper, are now becoming frustrated with the proliferation of paper
reference and convenience copies is significant.  Another key is that
more than 80% of the internal and external forms in our forms management
program are now e-forms dowloadable from various websites, and most of
them are fillable electronically as well.  Customer traffic at the forms
management service counter is down to a small fraction of what it was 10
years ago.  
 
Dean Bundy, CRM
Naval Research Laboratory
 
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do not represent or reflect the official policies or programs of the
Naval Research Laboratory.  
 
 

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