{"id":7454,"date":"2018-04-20T15:15:33","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T19:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=7454"},"modified":"2018-05-08T12:12:22","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T16:12:22","slug":"the-price-of-going-paperless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=7454","title":{"rendered":"The Price of Going Paperless"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the increasing amount of businesses using digital platforms, paper still exists in massive quantities in the records management world. The University Records Center here at Mason houses 12,500 boxes of paper records. In terms of the individual sheets of paper, some calculations<\/a> estimate we have more than 30 million documents.<\/p>\n

30,000,000 pieces of paper.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Paper

image taken from giphy.com (https:\/\/gph.is\/KCIT4e)<\/p><\/div>\n

In spite of the large number of boxes and the even more staggering number of individual documents housed therein, University Records Management frequently fields the question, “why can’t you just scan it all?” If we leave aside the question of ownership and confidentiality of the records (no small part of the equation, but this is not the topic today), the largest factor to consider is the cost.<\/p>\n

The process of scanning an analog item such as paper for use and preservation on digital platforms is more involved than settling a stack of paper onto our copier\/scanners and exporting them into a savable format. Within records management, we are less concerned with the permanent preservation of records than our archival counterparts – most of our records series have a retention period of ten years or less after the records become inactive. Ten years is not so long as “forever,” but in terms of the technology timeline, file formats and applications can and will become outdated. Digitizing a record requires the following:<\/p>\n