This comes as a real experience and may fit what you're looking for.  I worked 
for an oil and gas company that had just made a large acquisition of another 
O&G company.  Our manager decided it would be brilliant to scan the well files 
as we received them, and so was born a terrible project of scanning poorly-
organized well files into poorly-organized digital files with minimal metadata.  
They were just useful enough that some people liked having the digital copy 
handy, but for the most part they were just giant PDF's on a hard drive.  
When I came on one of my major tasks was to revisit the digital copies, break 
them into meaningful sections, and make them more useful.

For your class, this hits on a number of areas that relate both directly and 
indirectly to digital preservation.  The first is organizing the data properly so 
that it can be useful for the long term - establishing appropriate metadata and 
then capturing the metadata.  There's the care required to ensure good 
images when scanning.  There's the most appropriate format to scan the files 
into, perhaps PDF/A.  There's the question of how to store the images and 
data (e.g. a robust EDRMS), and how to migrate the data to new systems 
that are adopted in the years to come.  The fundamental question of data 
and media obsolescence of course applies.  Add to all of this the fact that 
well files are dynamic files, and new information has to be added to them on 
an ongoing basis.  This was complicated by the fact that we were maintaining 
two complete copies, the paper and the electronic, because the younger 
engineers found the electronic file indispensible and the older engineers 
wanted nothing but paper.

Perhaps that'll at least give you some ideas.  Good luck!

Wayne Hoff, CRM
Calgary, AB

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance
To unsubscribe from this list, click the below link. If not already present, place UNSUBSCRIBE RECMGMT-L or UNSUB RECMGMT-L in the body of the message.
mailto:[log in to unmask]