Westchester County Uses Fujifilm Document Archive System To Improve Efficiency, Save Space

Fujifilm Computer Products Division

New York's Westchester County Archives & Records Center, a unit within the Department of Information Technology, has the daunting assignment of annually managing approximately two million new documents that both require immediate retrieval and the safeguard of permanent storage. Specifically, the Center stores files for the Westchester County Clerk's land records department. This requires the dual tasks of archiving and protecting original historical documents dating back to the 1800s, while also creating new, secure image files for present-day land records. Simultaneously, the Center also maintains the vendor records for the county Health Department's Children with Special Needs program, with its ever-growing cache of confidential student assessment and progress reports that need to be maintained and accessible until each preschool child in the program turns 21 years of age. If not imaged, these two groups of paper records alone would require their own warehouse for storage, making file retrieval cumbersome and time consuming. As a best practice in records management, the images are supported by a microfilm backup, rather than maintain the paper in storage. Upgrading to a more advanced document management system that captures sensitive and confidential information with greater accuracy has provided increased efficiency for the Center.

Employees in the Scanning Unit of the Center had been using a microfilm archive system for the land records that was roughly a decade old. Over the years it had become insufficient and made the annual conversion to microfilm of the new million-plus imaged documents in the system a separate full-time job. It also no longer met the needs of the county. "We needed a product that would accept imaged files in a variety of formats, interface smoothly with current hardware and software, plus run cost-effectively," said Patty Dohrenwend, director. "That couldn't be done with our old system."

At the same time, the number of boxes filled with Children with Special Needs documents continually increased – and the amount of free records storage space at the Center decreased. It became clear that a solution was needed to accommodate these records too in the computer output microfilm system. An improvement in the quality of the archived documents was also a critical need, as the Center was responsible for creating true, accurate documents for the Children with Special Needs program, as well as preserving the integrity of the multi-century-old land records.