On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 6:27 AM, Toner, Alex John <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> Within the University Registrar's Office at the University of Pittsburgh
> we've been implementing electronic imaging for document retention and
> access purposes, in particular for those records requiring permanent
> retention.
>
> I'm interested to know how similar conversions to document capture systems
> have affected your physical retention time of the corresponding paper
> record? For instance, a paper record for a certain term would remain onsite
> for two years following the applicable term, after which it would either be
> microfilmed or purged. Now, we're processing, capturing, and indexing
> documents on a daily/weekly basis.
>
> It seems to me that it has become unnecessary to retain the paper copies
> for such a long period following their electronic conversion, and I'd like
> to know how others have modified their retention schedules to deal with
> retention of hardcopy records following digitization.
>

You'll likely get a range of opinions on this from various individuals
working in a range of industry segments, and they'll go from "discard as
soon as you've validated capture" to "retain the source materials until
retention is met for the information contained in them".

The site Gary provided gives decent information as to some of what should
be considered when making your decision, but your organization has to
ultimately determine how comfortable they feel with the ability to
persistently access any information converted to digital form, for as long
as they are required to retain it.

An important piece of the puzzle is the quality control component of
capture and post-capture evaluation of the images AND the indexing to
ensure content is able to be viewed and that the data captured while
indexing is accurate. If your metadata is not entered properly, searching
for content will be a huge problem.... the images are stored randomly on
media (platters, tape, whatever) and you can't just hit and miss find
things.  When paper source materials are misfiled, if they're alphabetical,
chronological or numeric, you can search adjacent areas and typically find
things (eventually).  You don't always have the same success rate if SMITH
is entered as SIMTH or 12/14/2011 is entered as 12/14/2001.

Another key consideration is the need for periodic sampling and review to
ensure content captured on media remains stable.  The typical review period
is 3-5 years, and media should be refreshed between 7-10 years.  This means
ALL of your content with retention periods in excess of 10 years will be
converted and/or migrated that frequently.  This helps to avoid
obsolescence of both format and media.  This means if you have permanent
retention content, it will need to be potentially migrated 10 or more
times- this is NOT an inexpensive proposition, depending on how much data
you have.   You'll need to estimate the cost of effort and materials... and
also plan that hardware will need to be replaced periodically, most of it
goes out of cycle every 10-15 years MAXIMUM.

The source materials being maintained are typically quite stable, they
require protection from theft, fire and environmental controls to ensure
they remain stable.  But properly indexed and protected, if the access rate
is low, they remain persistently accessible and relatively low cost to
manage in a properly designed setting.

In projects I've been involved in with long-term (25+ year) and permanent
retention records, our decision has been to retain the source materials as
the formal record until retention is met, and to use the images as
reference copies. We also include a 'location code' as a pointer to the
source materials with the metadata for the images, to assist in locating
them if needed.  As a means of controlling cost for conversion and
migration, we also segregate images of permanent records onto independent
media from those with shorter retention periods, which reduces costs and
facilitates the effort when conversions do happen.

Larry
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-- 


*Lawrence J. Medina Danville, CARIM Professional since 1972*

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