The primary reason to digitize permanent retention records is access and preservation.  The more people handle the original documents the more damaged they become.  For those interested in the content of these documents strictly for research purposes, access to the digitized images suffices.  For those who absolutely have to have a tactile connection to history, the originals can be provided, if justified.  In fact, some digitization processes (costly to be sure) can actually aid in "seeing" characters and script that may not be discernable to the eye on the original.

As to records with less than permanent retention values, the same benefit should be considered - access to the information in a more cost efficient media.  Use of digitization on these records should be based on retention time (usually 10 years or more) and/or volume (costs to store and access originals will be much more for large volumes of paper records).  Once the digitized images have been validated as true copies of the originals (can be image by image or in spot checked batches), there is no reason to keep the original paper since courts all over the U.S. accept images in lieu of paper as legal records.  However, if you do keep the paper original, you are going to incur costs for storage as well keeping them in a quickly accessible order, because, as long as the paper exists, the courts will consider IT to be the legal record.

Ginny Jones 
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI) 
Records Manager 
Information Technology Division 
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities 
Newport News, VA 
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