Archive Writing: The Gold Standard for Document Preservation

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Archive Writing
The Gold Standard for Document Preservation
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Archive Writing
The Gold Standard for Document Preservation
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Archive Writing

• Archive Writing puts your digital images onto
  microfilm.
• In more technical terms, it produces a
  technology-independent analogue back-up of your
  digital records.
• But why would you want an analogue copy when the
  world has gone digital?
• Archive writing to microfilm preserves your
  documents and avoids technology obsolescence.
• You can also eliminate storage costs for paper
  documents. Plus, it takes about 95 less space
  to store microfilm than it does paper. 

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Archive Writing

• Archive writing provides an excellent solution
  for disaster recovery.
• Unlike paper or digital records, microfilm can
  survive a flood or hurricane, and retain your
  information for longer than any other format
  available hundreds of years.
•  
• Archive writing also creates an admissible
  document format for legal proceedings.
• With enhanced security of your information, your
  organization is also better positioned to comply
  with new government regulations.

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Archive Writing

• Preservation is Key!
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• Living in a digital world means information can
  flow around the globe in seconds.
• Speed and ease have caused us the massive
  migration to digital information. And because
  were always looking for faster and better,
  technology upgrades guarantee records will become
  inaccessible in very short order.
• All of the advancements that weve enjoyed in
  digital hardware and software over the years have
  come at the expense of preservation.
• Critical information that must be accessed over
  the course of time cant rely on digital formats.
  Instead, it must use archive writing to ensure
  ongoing availability well into the future.

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Archive Writing

• Any valuable, historical document must be
  preserved through archive writing.
• If you record these critical documents solely on
  digital formats, you will eventually become
  obsolete. You will lose them within a short
  period of time.
• Just think about the short life span of digital
  media.
• In the last 20 years, digital data has been
  preserved on a variety of media floppy disks in
  8, 5.25 and 3.5 formats tape cassettes zip
  drives CDs, DVDs, Flash drives and more.  
• For this reason and many others, archive writing
  makes better sense for preserving documents well
  into the future.
• Transferring documents to microfilm avoids the
  issues with obsolete mediums and proprietary
  technologies that would render access difficult
  and costly, if not impossible.

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Archive Writing

• Digital conversions also require constant
  maintenance.
• As technologies evolve, youll need to regularly
  migrate to the latest hardware and software
  versions to ensure access of your critical
  documents, and there is also no way to predict
  how often or costly these migrations will be.
• Archive writing allows your organization to have
  the best of both worlds.
• You get all the benefits of the digital age with
  the security of an analogue format.
• If a digital file is accidentally deleted or
  subjected to a virus, you have the peace of mind
  knowing you can retrieve your microfilm image.
• With digital and analogue formats, your critical
  files remain safe, complete and easily accessible.

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About the Author
Kevin D'Arcy is VP of Sales and Marketing for MES
Hybrid Document Systems, Ontario's leading
document scanning and document management
supplier. For more information about Archive
Writing, visit http//www.mesltd.ca.