All,

I work for a wildlife research facility that is part of the Animal Plant 
and Health Inspection agency (APHIS), which is part of the USDA.  APHIS is 
just beginning to think about scanning records.   I am to identify all the 
processes in my corner of APHIS that receive or generate hardcopy 
documents that would be candidates for scanning.  The "first step in 
identifying this information is identifying as comprehensively as possible 
all the processes utilized in APHIS that receive or generate documents and 
collecting essential information about those documents."  Doing this is 
not a commitment, just a survey of what we have.

The survey is the easy part.  What will be next is identifying what should 
be scanned.  As usual, there are people here who say "scan it all" and 
others who say "it's a waste to scan anything."  My concern when I hear 
"scan it all" is that we should only scan records that are accessed 
frequently enough to warrant the expense of scanning.  I'm interested in 
hearing how others decide what records to scan based on their access 
level, and what is that level.  Is it once a month, is it once a week, is 
it every two weeks?  I know all organizations are different, I'd just like 
to hear about ratios and how those decisions were reached.

Many thanks,
Nancy Freeman, Records Manager/Archivist
National Wildlife Research Center
4101 LaPorte Ave.
Fort Collins,  CO  80521
(970) 266-6023
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