Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

Benefits and Requirements for Electronic Archives

Today’s Archiving Challenges

If you suddenly couldn’t access the building where your vital records were kept, what would you do?

In today’s business and political climate, corporations and governments around the world are beginning to pay close attention to their processes and the resulting record archives that they are—or are not—keeping. In a paper-based world, traditional archiving has meant storage of paper, but what happens as more and more records are created electronically? How do you preserve both paper-based and electronic records in a consistent format? How do you eliminate the need for paper records? How do you preserve the exact look and feel of a document today or 30 years from today? How do you provide consistency in the integrity of your archives?

The introduction of personal computers into business has drastically changed the archiving environment. Prior to the 1990’s, most offi ces still had typing pools and word processing groups and kept records on paper in centralized fi les. But once computers became the norm for the majority of workers, the usefulness of the centralized fi le room disappeared. It became everyone’s responsibility to create, fi le, and maintain his or her own documents. As a result, corporations and governments have lost control over these records...