What are the biggest risks when digitizing files?

The goal of digitizing paper documents is often to replace paper archives and thus facilitate their decluttering. This also allows users to benefit from the advantages of searching and working digitally. This saves effort, time, and therefore a lot of money. But are there also risks associated with digitizing paper files? Yes. There certainly are.

There are three basic risks:

1. Incomplete scanning. This means that not all documents are scanned. Professional digitization companies use specialized equipment to prevent this. This minimizes the risk.
2. Unreadable scans. This results in excessive loss of quality. This is particularly common with poor-quality documents or limited scanning equipment.
3. Incomplete OCR or metadata, which makes documents impossible to find or the content of the documents cannot be found digitally.

Do you want to be sure that your archive is properly digitised? In a professional manner and tailored to your wishes and possibilities? Then we invite you to get acquainted with the archiving solutions of De Nationale Archiefkluis, the archive expert in the Netherlands.

Feel free to call us or send us a message via the contact form.

Advice  Think carefully in advance about the necessity of digitizing the existing archives and make a selection in (1) Necessary, (2) Desired or (3) Not necessary. This will save you a lot of time and money later on.