Digital Everyday: Looking After Digital Records

Introduction

Every business needs to think about managing its digital records. Any action is better than none: take steps in stages and don’t tackle everything at once.

What are digital records?

Digital records are emails, files, databases and images created and kept as part of daily working life. For most organisations they are the main method of communication and transaction.

These formats can include Microsoft Word, PDF, TXT, TIFF images, MP3s and many other file types.

There are two types of digital records:

  1. ‘born digital’ records that have only ever existed in digital format
  2. ‘digitised’ records which are digital copies of hardcopy documents such as important records or old photographs that have been scanned for ease of access
  • Digitised images created during a digitisation project (for example so Marketing Team has a bank of images to use from old advertising brochures, or so Estates Department have their plans in digital form and accessible from anywhere) need to be preserved. Investment in digitisation is much less useful if digitised images become unusable over time
  • Digitised original documents inherently hold irreplaceable evidential and historic value and therefore should be also retained and preserved

What are the risks?

Our digital records are the archives of the future. Without active preservation there is a significant risk that the more recent story of the business and its people will be lost forever due to file obsolescence and degradation. The records we create now are the ones that people in 50-100 years’ time will want to research.

There are also challenges in proving the evidential value of digital files for business and legal purposes. Without active digital preservation, it is less likely the authenticity of a digital record can be believed.

Digital records are easily created, stored, copied and distributed by millions of people. This means:

  • records are less likely to be well organised
  • increased security risks including virus and cyber attacks
  • increased risk that information legislation could be breached, such as personal data
  • high costs to businesses and the environment as IT infrastructure has to support space requirements and keep billions of records secure

Digital records management is therefore just as important as managing paper records. We generate more digital records than we do on paper.

Unlike paper records, we need passwords and technology to access a range of digital file and storage formats. This can make things tricky when staff change and IT evolves – access to older digital records becomes more challenging. Digital files can also degrade over time.

What’s the solution?

We are all learning about digital preservation. Approaches change as digital records evolve. There are however organisations such as the Digital Preservation Coalition and The National Archives that have resources to help with starting and progressing digital preservation actions. See our Useful Links section.

Digital preservation is one aspect of an archive service that is assessed as part of the Archive Service Accreditation scheme, the UK standard for archive services. All organisations with archives are encouraged to use the standard and guidance freely as a framework for development in relation to digital preservation and other aspects of caring and using their records.

It can be useful in discussions with colleagues and making a business case to cite the Archive Service Accreditation standard and guidance, as well as this webpage, as evidence to show the importance of digital preservation.

Working together

Adopt a practical, partnership approach to develop good practice. Work together with all stakeholders, especially users including other staff within your organisation and your Information Technology department or team. The support of senior managers and collaboration with IT colleagues are crucial to progressing digital preservation work. You may find the article ‘How to talk to IT About Digital Preservation’ helpful to read before you begin conversations with colleagues in IT. As this article notes, there are differences in understanding of the concept of ‘archiving’ between the IT and archiving professions. Being aware of this will help you present your needs with more clarity. Invite IT colleagues to come on board to collaborate in solving the challenge of digital preservation in line with innovation goals as a ‘business-wide’ challenge. Work together to balance storage solutions and risks against the resources available.

Though there is no one ‘set’ way of going about digital preservation, there are simple starting points. There are then options using tools and systems to establish more robust digital preservation practices for the medium to long term.