http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/books/16archive.html
First off, I have to admit that I find my best ideas for my blog by reading newspapers and various blogs. I read “Fending Off Digital Decay, Bit by Bit” in today's (March, 16) edition of the New York Times and quickly pounced of the premise of maintaining an archive in our ever changing digital landscape.
Many years ago I worked at Fujifilm in the document products division read – microfilm. When microfilm was the unchallenged king of the archive it still had doubters as to the longevity of the medium. This was the case even after lab results proved that, if handled and stored properly, microfilm could last in excess of 350 years. Another plus for microfilm was the fact that as an analog technology, it would always be viewable using a light source and magnification. Fast forward to digital records (DR) and in short order, inadequacies with the DR medium come to light. In the Times article Patricia Cohen wrote, “Electronically produced drafts, correspondence and editorial comments, sweated over by contemporary poets, novelists and nonfiction authors, are ultimately just a series of digits — 0’s and 1’s — written on floppy disks, CDs and hard drives, all of which degrade much faster than old-fashioned acid-free paper.” Did I read this correctly, paper outlasting a digital record? The path seems clear, no more scanning for me…
I cite the above not so much to promote a move back to older analog technology, but instead use this as a cautionary tale of the potential pitfalls of a poorly managed document management strategy (DMS). When developing your DMS it is important to take into account the retention requirements of the documents in question. Not only doe this apply to paper converted to digital but to “born-digital materials — those initially created in electronic form” as well. This brings us to your DMS. There are two parts to a good DMS, one part of the equation is document retention requirements. The second part is document recall. Consider this, if you were to find a 5 1/4” floppy today with a document created using VisiCalc from back in the day, how would you propose to read the contents of said disc? Now apply this same thought to discovering a CD or DVD 20 years from now. One whose information was created with software and system from today's office environment. Today’s software hardware solution, is tomorrow's orphaned VisiCalc.
Is the solution then to do nothing and continue to live in a paper world? My answer is a resounding no. The sheer volume alone of today's information overload begs for a good DMS. It very well could be that for certain document types a hybrid system is in order. For example, when managing documents with an archive requirement beyond 10 years you need to consider the the life cycle of the document. Even though federal requirements might state you need to keep a document for a set period of time, the active life cycle of the document might fall far short of the federal archive requirement. My definition of a document life cycle is defined as the working life of a document. Think of a mortgage file a a document with a short term life cycle that is coupled with a longer term retention requirement. In a mortgage file scenario the strategy could be to use low a low cost hosted server for the beginning stages of the life of this document. After a pre-determined period, the document could then be migrated from the web server and written to, are you ready, microfilm for long term retention. This is only one small example of the thought that needs to be put into developing your DMS.
So were does this leave you and your organization? Have you carefully thought out and planned a proper DMS? Have you taken into account the retention and recall requirements for your documents? Bear the following in mind – “…archivists are finding themselves trying to fend off digital extinction at the same time that they are puzzling through questions about what to save, how to save it and how to make that material accessible”. With careful planning and consideration you can avoid placing your documents in a “Betamax” format only to discover, that you have been left holding the proverbial digital bag.
Thanks for reading.
Marc
Data Reduction Systems
Vice President, Business Development marcc@drscorp.com
Office - 908.687.5636
Expanding the potential. Fulfilling the promise.
*New York Times -
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