Understanding the Library of the Future: Converting to Digital Archives

In this age, many companies are suffering from a glut of information. Warehouses are backlogged. Post boxes are overflowing. And SPAM isn’t just for dinner anymore. On one hand, a company must seek to satisfy its customers’ demands for information regarding its products and/or services. On the other hand, a company must also figure out how to best allocate, share, and/or constrain the information it possesses. What’s a company to do when suffering from information overload?

By far, the most prevalent solution in today’s market is to transfer the access, storage, and maintenance of information to a digital medium. If you wish to store 100,000,000 documents in a physical space, you’ll need a lot of warehouses. But keeping the same number of documents in an optimized virtual archive, such as a Storage Area Network (SAN) can require less physical space – one data center can handle all your documents and others besides. When a company can consolidate its paperwork, archives, and images, and also store all this information in a digital space a fraction of the size that storing the same physical items would require, then why isn’t everyone on the digital archive bandwagon?

Having been asked this question by several people, I thought to provide some semblance of an answer. This document is an overview of certain issues that need to be addressed, and logistical decisions that must be made when transitioning to a digital archiving system or paperless office. To move ahead one must gain an understanding of “The Library of the Future!”

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