Since computers have been employed for general business use the phrase 'the paperless office' has been quoted as a goal for the modern business administration. The same principal applies to holders of archive drawings and photographic records who have the facilities for the storage of their archives in digital format therefore improving retrieval and copying times.

The conversion of the original hard copy records into digital records is known as digitisation, and there are two approaches to achieving the required end product.

For line drawings the question needs to be asked as to whether the drawing is likely to be used and modified or is retained as an archive. If the latter is the case then the drawing is scanned and stored as a digital file on CDROM or DVD. If the drawing is to be used as a working drawing on a CAD system, then the scanned data needs to be converted into vector data in an intelligent form i.e. in a way that replicates the same drawing if it had been produced originally on CAD.

Photographs are also scanned using the original negatives or transparencies if possible, if not then photographic prints. Old and damaged photographs can be cleaned and digitally repaired - see photo restoration.

Storage of digital records requires three questions to be answered:

	The resolution of the scanning is a balance between quality and file size
	The format of the digital data and any compression has a major effecton file size and a minor effect on quality
	The storage medium can have an effect on retrieval times

As computer storage becomes less expensive the move is towards higher standards, i.e. higher resolution, but it should beremembered that a relatively small increase in the resolution results in a proportionately high increase in file size.For example, a three colour 8 bit image (RGB) at A4 is 100 Megabytes in uncompressed form at 600 dots per inch, but risesto 400 Megabytes at 1200 dpi.