Professional SharePoint® 2007 Records Management Development: Managing Official Records with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

Chapter 10. Managing Physical Records

This chapter is about using the records management functionality provided by SharePoint to manage records that exist primarily on paper and must be stored physically. When you think about it, dealing with physical records is so fundamentally different from managing electronic documents that the challenges should be obvious. First, there is the problem of keeping the physical documents and any associated metadata synchronized with the corresponding database record or list item being used to manage them. Next, there are the problems of securing the physical repository and tracking what happens to the documents it contains. Then there are the purely logistic issues involved in finding and retrieving documents that have already been stored in the repository and ensuring that they find their way back to the right spot.

Clearly, dealing with physical records properly involves additional costs. There are the real costs associated with maintaining a secure storage facility and the paperwork and personnel costs required to manage both the transient and final disposition of documents. Then there are the soft costs that flow from the additional time needed to coordinate the flow of electronic and non-electronic data throughout the organization. These problems are, of course, not new, but they do present a unique set of challenges for any Rights Management Service (RMS), and especially for one designed to support collaboration and workflow.

Physical Records ...