University Secretary

Before scanning any documents, you should assess the cost-effectiveness: for example, it may not be worthwhile scanning:  

• records with very short retention periods (e.g. 6 months or less)

• records that are rarely consulted

• records with long or permanent retention periods (The average lifespan of a file format is 5 to 7 years. To ensure electronic documents can continue to be read, they need to be converted to new file formats at regular intervals. Over a period of decades the effort required to prevent them from becoming trapped in obsolete technology is likely to be considerable. Furthermore the more times data is migrated, the greater the risk that it may become corrupted.)

If you decide to scan your documents, do not discard the hard copies until the quality of the images has been checked, and you have made sure there are adequate indexing, security, back up and migration procedures in place. If it is likely that the scanned images will be required for evidential purposes, then your scanning procedures should comply with the British Standards Code of Practice for Legal Admissibility and Evidential Weight of Information Stored Electronically, so that it will be possible to authenticate the copies adequately.

In a few cases, it may be advisable to retain the hard copies because of the importance of being able to produce an original signed document for legal purposes (e.g. contracts). Although under the terms of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 electronic copies are legally admissible, the evidential weight of an original signed document is still likely to be greater.

For more guidance on scanning, see the Factsheet.