Before investigating digital archive solutions, you need to be sure why you are archiving at all.

The motivations to retain information fall into three broad categories:

• Regulatory

  The many national and international bodies that regulate industry demand that records must be kept for an appropriate length of time. The rules and the length of time retention is required vary, but the trend is for more retention for longer periods.

• Legal Defence

  Legal defence: In order to successfully defend or prosecute legal action organisations need to present full and accurate records to the court. To be acceptable these need to provide evidence of good information management practice and be readable by those wishing to use them.

• Knowledge Reuse

  The re-use of the accumulated knowledge encapsulated in the data generated by today’s activities is invaluable in advising the decision making of tomorrow. For some organisations, for example Libraries and Archives, this is at the heart of their existence. In many industries this is also becoming a major driver as organisations try to recycle more value from their intellectual assets at a time when job tenure by individuals is lower and decreasing.

A good understanding of why you are archiving is critical to selecting what you need to archive as a result and must underpin the whole digital archiving programme.