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BRIEF OVERVIEW OF DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
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By Steve Gilheany
Introduction
This article is about document management. The perspective of the
article is the transition of document managers from managing paper

documents to managing paper and digital documents. This article
assumes some understanding of the management of paper documents
and does not assume any background in the technology of digital
document management.

One System for Paper and Digital Records
All of the problems of managing paper documents are found in
managing digital documents. There are relatively few new problems

unique to digital documents. Often people are introduced to document
management because they have experience in digital systems and a
digital document management system is being implemented. People

learning document management in a digital environment frequently
assume that the problems of cataloging and indexing are unique to the
digital environment, when in fact, the problems (and solutions) have

existed for many years in paper document management. While the
number of problems introduced by digital documents are relatively
limited, it is not wise to mix problems that are unique to the
management of digital documents with the problems of poorly managed

paper documents. For this reason, reviewing and cleaning up the
management of paper documents is important to the success of any
digital document management system intended to include the contents of

the paper documents.
In another close parallel, setting up the organization of a digital
document management system is very similar to organizing paper
documents, and good intellectual control of the digital document

organization is essential to the success of a management system for
digital documents.
Having two parallel systems, one to manage paper documents, and

a second to manage digital documents, is very expensive. Eventually
(and often very quickly), the need to cut expenses eliminates one of the
two systems. This either causes the loss of the investment in the digital

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Gilheany S. Brief Overview of Document Management / Steve Gilheany. – Available
at : http://www.archivebuilders.com/whitepapers/21954p.pdf