(2001IMJ) Should PDF Be Used for Archiving Electronic Records? (PDF)
Author: John T. Phillips, CRM
The Information Management Journal: January 2001, Vol. 35, No. 1 (PDF)

There are issues that affect PDF's usefulness for creating, distributing, and storing electronic documents designated as records for retention. Hardware and software technology, metadata capture, business processes used in file creation, and the intricacies of PDF make this file format right for certain applications while possibly wrong for others.
Preserving and archiving electronic records for extended periods of time requires attention to both technology and business issues. With the proliferation of software to produce electronic documents comes a growing need to store those documents in a standard electronic format.

Printing documents to paper for long-term archiving may be a convenient and reasonable solution when documents must be retained for 10 years or more. Printing documents avoids the need to address long-term technology and data storage issues. However, storing documents in paper format requires large amounts of space for storage and lengthy time for retrieving even thoroughly indexed documents. In addition, conversion to paper format negates many benefits of managing records electronically, such as the ability to search document content and to transmit documents over computer networks quickly.

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(Information Management Journal article; PDF download; English; 4 pages; January 2001, Vol. 35, No. 1; Copyright 2001, ARMA International.)
Publisher: ARMA International
http://www.arma.org/bookstore/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=1282

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