On 15/11/2018 11:26, Roger Munford via Hampshire wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I am on the local residents association committee which generates a
> quite a bit of documentation through its various activities and there
> is a paper archive stretching back to the 30's.
>
> It has been suggested that we should digitise it. At the same time
> most of the current documentation is held as emails and attachments so
> I thought it would make sense to see if there was a document
> management system which would suit our needs or standards to follow.
>
> I was wondering if anybody had similar experience and had any advice
> to offer.
>
> Regards
>
> Roger Munford
>
>
Having been in similar position for a company I was working for, I can
not stress enough of the importance of having the right person (better
still persons) that does the scanning. Regardless of how good the
program that you use to index and archive the files, if the person doing
the scanning does not understand what they are scanning then what is
scanned will be worthless.
It would be far better to have a group of people that do the scanning so
that when illness stop one member of the group or somebody leaves and
other people that replace them that there is a continuity to the
scanning from start to finish, so that a high standard of sorting and
prepping of the paperwork is carried out.
The sorting and prepping of paperwork will include removing all staples,
paper clips and other type of paper bindings. Cleaning the paper, dust
will ruin the scan images and will require that the scanner is serviced.
Unfolding the pages so that they don't jam up the scanner paper feed (I
would recommend getting a scanner with a page feeder rather than a flat
bed scanner).
Once scanned you will need to decide what to do with the paperwork its
self, some of it may be of historical importance and needs to be kept
while other paperwork can be destroyed.
I have used the Kodak Alaris i1150 which is a good desk scanner for the
likes of a receptionist or accounts person to scan those bits of paper
that come in via post and for bigger batches of scanning we used the
Fujitsu fi 6670A which was used for processing large batches of
paperwork (both in a Windows world though although there are linux
drivers for the Kodak device from Kodak).
Also don't forget to consider the storage and backup of the archive that
you produce, stored on a single hard disk of somebody's PC is not going
to be ideal.
Hope it helps
Tim
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