-----Original Message-----
Does anyone have other factors I should include? Has anyone completed
such a conversion?

Sharon,

Here are my "pieces of wisdom" in answer to your question on costs.  I
can't really give you the cost figures, but I can tell you some
additional factors to consider.

Unless you have some indexes, these documents will be useless to anyone
as they will have to open every image to determine its contents.
Therefore you will need to add the time involved in analyzing what
indexes will be necessary and then the time to index as well.

As you consider the scanning effort, don't forget to include some type
of quality control measures.

If these documents have long retention periods, will CD's be reliable
storage media?

We have completed some of these conversions, but we are storing the
documents on magnetic media.  The reason we could justify the cost is
that these documents are vital records and they are still active
documents.  Barring that, I wonder if there is really a good return on
the investment.

Mary Hilliard
Records Management Officer
University of Texas System

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