I was just reading about the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Project - where they're capturing digital images of the scrolls using very unique camera/scan devices – to digitize, preserve the information, and make it available to the public. This artifact and the information it contains are priceless and could easily be lost, thus the need for preservation. While information in our businesses may not seem as valuable by comparison, it is nonetheless valuable to your company and the concept of preservation must become part of your information practices to ensure it is available and accessible in the future.
Think about this for a moment, the idea of preserving information of all types. How many of you reading this remember products like VisiCalc, 123, WordPerfect and any other long ago product of choice? Now ask yourself, do you still have files in your information stores that were created by these applications? If so, does the information in these files have business value and could you access them if called upon to do so? What about media types? Do you still have files stored on floppy drives, Zip drives and tape? If so, would you be able to load and access them?
In my view, many organizations forget about information that is accessed infrequently and seldom consider the potential impact it may have if the information in these files and on this media suddenly must be presented for litigation, audit, Disaster recovery, or even the need to access it for day-to-day business activities. The time to prepare and act is not when you must but prior to an immediate need or demand. To assess how well you are doing in this area, conduct a high-level information audit and see if you uncover any older or outdated file formats and media types. When you do, investigate how much is there and the value of what you have found. Use this to make a decision for actions to preserve or destroy. If there is no business value, you should not keep it but if there is, you should take steps to preserve it. The information belongs to the company but the decision to act is yours. What will you do?
If you are ready to move forward and are finding yourself stuck or unfocused and are not sure where to begin or what to do next, seek professional assistance and/or training to get you started. Be sure to investigate AIIM's Enterprise Content Management training program.
And be sure to read the AIIM Training Briefing on ECM (authored by yours truly). Click on the image to download and read.
What say you? Do you have a story to tell? What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you have a topic of interest you would like discussed in this forum? Let me know.
Bob Larrivee, Director and Industry Advisor – AIIM
Email me: blarrivee@aiim.org
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www.aiim.org/training
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