Digitizing Archival Records: Benefits and Challenges for a Large Professional Accounting Association
Abstract
With antecedents extending to 1886, CPA Australia is one of the world’s most significant professional accounting associations. Reflective of its long history and widespread influence, the organization holds an extensive and diverse archive that evidences both its own development and the general evolution of accounting and business practices. This article presents a case study of a project to digitize selected aspects of this archive. Informed by perspectives on managing archives in the digital era, the benefits and challenges of digitization are presented. A key benefit was enabling access to digital images while preserving rare and fragile original records and documents. However, challenges arose in prioritizing the items for digitization, and this necessitated the development of a model, taking the form of a decision matrix. The CPA Australia case study will be informative for other organizations seeking to use digitization as a means to overcome the dilemma associated with providing access to archival materials while also ensuring their preservation.
RÉSUMÉ
CPA Australia, dont les origines remontent à 1886, demeure une des sociétés professionnelles de comptables les plus importantes au monde. À l’image de sa longue histoire et de son influence très étendue, l’organisation détient des archives considérables et diverses qui font preuve à la fois de son développement et de l’évolution générale de la comptabilité et des pratiques d’affaires. Cet article présente une étude de cas d’un projet pour numériser certains aspects de ces archives. Fondé sur des perspectives sur la gestion des archives à l’ère numérique, on y présente les avantages et les défis de la numérisation. Un avantage clé est de permettre l’accès aux images numériques tout en préservant des documents d’archives originaux rares et fragiles. Cependant, des défis ont surgi lorsqu’il fut question de déterminer quels documents numériser en priorité, d’où la nécessité de développer un modèle qui a pris la forme d’une matrice décisionnelle. L’étude de cas de la CPA Australia intéressera d’autres organisations qui cherchent à se servir de la numérisation comme moyen de surmonter le dilemme lié à la question de donner accès au matériel archivistique tout en assurant sa préservation.
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