Laura,
We do this.  The contract process is well defined with a clear understanding of who "owns" the contracts and manages the retention.  Contracts are interesting in that they have a retention period based on the end of the contract which may not be known at the time the document is scanned.  We include a closing date which is the retention "trigger" on contracts and when they are scanned, the closing date is set at 9999/99/99.  When a contract does end, the group who manages the documents will query the repository and retrieve all documents that are a part of a particular contract (might include amendments, etc.) and will put the actual closing date on every document so that the appropriate retention query will produce the documents for the disposition process on the correct date.
 
Mary Hilliard

________________________________

From: Records Management Program on behalf of Laura Dettloff
Sent: Wed 10/11/2006 9:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] Scanning contracts?



Good morning!

I was curious if anyone out there has undertaken a project to image contracts
and move them to a central repository.  We are thinking about doing something
like this at our university.

Currently, our contracts are scattered throughout all departments in the
university and there is no central repository - which creates many obvious
problems when a contract needs to be located quickly.  There is also no formal
retention period in place (currently) for contracts so individual departments
all treat them differently, disposing of them when they see fit...or keeping
them forever.  The university also has many different types of contracts,
including those related to construction projects, consulting efforts,
entertainment, employees, etc...the list goes on and on.

We would like to move toward a central repository for all contracts and we're
thinking about the possibility of imaging them (provided our General Counsel
agree that the imaged copy can serve as the legal copy of the document and the
paper can be disposed of) for centralization purposes and ease of access.  Has
anyone accomplished this task successfully?  Are there pros and cons that we
should be aware of?  What programs have you used to do the scanning or create
the electronic repository?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks so much!

Laura

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laura Dettloff
Archivist for Records Management

Archives of the University of Notre Dame
607 Hesburgh Library
Notre Dame, IN  46556

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