Stacey--
First, be aware that digitizing is not cheap. Time and costs can quickly
pile up if the paper is anything but pristine, and time will be needed to
prep the paper beforehand, QA the electronic copies afterward, and
reassemble the paper. Time is also money for the time you or a colleague
spends on the project, means something else is not getting done. Of course
these parts can be outsourced, but again $$$$.
Second, my rule of thumb for digitizing records is only to digitize
archival paper records if it gets moderate to heavy use, and it will
facilitate access (and secondarily help preserve the original). Accessing
a paper document 0-4 times a year or less does not merit digitization to
me. A blanket scan of all records does not make fiscal or usage sense to
me unless you've got money to burn.
I used to work in a University Archives which had many researchers and
administrator requesting materials. The only ones we routinely scanned
were images or well defined sets of records (from university staff) who
needed quick and frequent access -- which were just the minutes of the
Corporation (like a board of directors).
Since the digital copies were copies, it did not matter much about format.
I think we used pdf for text. Photos and images were scanned as tiffs with
a high resolution (publication quality) but provided JPEG copies of the
tiff file normally (unless it was for a publication). Scanning in this way
was costed out the end user/requestor. I should add that the scanning was
done in-house.
I've also been involved in outsourced large scan jobs, and still am. As I
said before, it can be pricey and time consuming...just want you to know
what you could be getting into.
Hope this helps.
Stephen Cohen, Records Manager
MetLife \ Legal Affairs
1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-6796
212-578-2373
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I'd like to digitize the records that are retained on a permanent basis
and wondered if there are any suggestions as to what electronic format
would be best to preserve them in. Was thinking about a searchable .pdf,
but wondered if you had any recommendations.
Stacey Nickell
Special Projects Director
West KY Community & Technical College
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