In 1978, Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster predicted that society would one day be entirely paperless. In those days, he had to rely on document archiving systems that were decidedly clumsy, and even he was convinced there was a better way to handle paper documents. In today's day and age, the choice for your document archiving system is torn between digital and paper.

As your company's collection of data grows, you will need to find more effective ways to retain data that you don't regularly access, but need to retain. This is where data archiving comes in. However, data archiving isn't as simple as tossing your documents into a folder – digital or physical – that you won't access very often. Improper data archiving will make your documents harder to manage, cost you money and even cause accidental destruction. The only way to avoid this is to know what data archiving pitfalls there are, and how to avoid them. To this end, make sure to avoid the following errors associated with data archiving.

Libraries manage a lot of documentation. In fact, a library can have so much documentation to manage that even the best run library can have a tough time keeping up with it. As you try to make room for new scholarly articles, news reports and other documents -- which flood your library every single day -- the management of your archived data can seem completely untenable. Fortunately, you do not have to add a whole new wing to your library just for your latest round of archived documents. This is all thanks to the wonders of modern technology. Here is what you should do:

Some do and some don’t, but there are few that would argue against the logic behind archiving documents. It is important that a business archive everything from emails to invoices for accountability, organizational, and legal purposes. By implementing archiving standards in your business you will improve your processes while ensuring they are protected long-term.

Among large groups of organizations it is not uncommon to find difficulties regarding accountability. By creating a system to archive documents your business will be able to answer; who, what, where, and when by following a document trail. Document archiving helps to eliminate or drastically reduce accountability issues within a business.