Importance of Archives in an Organization Paper Example

An archive in business is an institutional memory that belongs to an organization. Archiving is the process of keeping records and statements of an organization's for future reference. Archived information is always of lasting value to the organization. Documents and statements of an organization can be crucial in providing evidence, accountability, and research for government audit trials. Archives give an organization's verifications of transactions. Archived information includes legal documents, organization plans, minutes, emails, and maps together with personal records like employment letters, and business diaries. Archiving is significant for data management and can give an organization greater information control. As an organization expands, more data is created, and it needs to be monitored and managed for its proper utilization. The previous data may act as a guide for data management. An organization needs to keep track of its progress since its creation thus the purpose of data archiving. The paper reports on the importance of archives in an organization.

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Archiving in an organization prevents data loss. An organization is likely to lose information which has not been stored on a secure repository. Though the chances of a worker misplacing or deleting a file from a computer are slim, sometimes it does happen. In some cases, data recovery experts may retrieve some data, but the process is cumbersome, time taking, expensive and it is rarely entirely accurate (Abrams et al. 4). It is, therefore, the role of an organization's management to provide data archiving methods that are suitable for the organization. Archiving helps employees in the retrieval of backed up data independently without relying on third-party experts.

Archiving is also essential due to legal reasons. Most companies find themselves disposing of important documents or information which are legally required to prove existence and licensing of a company. An efficient archiving system in an organization should ensure that an organization's specific schedules of retention should be adhered to, regardless of the worker's knowledge about them (Barreau, Deborah, and Bonnie 40). In most countries, governments have set aside data protection authorities who are in charge of enforcing penalties on organizations to ensure that workers are aware that ignoring data protection policies could lead to substantial fines or imprisonment in complex cases. Data archiving is vital in enhancing the security of an organization's data. In the modern business world, data breaches and cyber-attacks are prevalent issues facing many organizations. Therefore, organizations need to adopt data archiving methods to secure the company's data. By archiving documents securely, organizations can keep track of their data and enhance information protection from unauthorized parties. Adept hackers are currently targeting most business; thus organizations need to be careful while archiving data.

Organization records have enduring values in an organization's history thus the reason they are stored in archives. An archive is a unique, irreplaceable asset in an organization. Archives help in establishing and maintaining both intellectual and physical control over records of an organization in enduring value (Abrams et al. 7). Most organizations, archives are historical records, and however, depending on the structure of an Association, archives can be inclusive of records that comply with state or federal regulatory data keeping requirements. It maintains the integrity of an organization's historical documents that are set to serve as the official records and central repository. Archives seek to gain improved controlled association's historical records; by the management of the information preservation, protection, accessioning, access and dissemination. Therefore, the organization should adopt archiving to enhance the ways as mentioned earlier of controlling an organization's data management.

Having an archive in an organization is crucial as it facilitates its ability to store historical records consistently. Archives also offer better access to the policies and histories of an organization. Additionally, archiving also provides information to staff members, employees and constituent associations in the most effective manner following the established industry standards, procedures, and policies (Barreau, Deborah, and Bonnie 43).

Additionally, archiving enables a company to facilitate the documentation and preservation of its legacy. The same can be utilized in raising awareness and informing the public, the professionally and other organization's disciplines about the policy, profession, history and many achievements (Fineberg, Samuel and Pankaj 6). It provides both external and internal opportunities on public relations hence creating a broader awareness of the depth and breadth of the organization's history. Archiving nurtures an organization's sense of pride among the management and staff. Archival materials are vital in reaching an organization's audience through films, speeches, brochures, books, journals and exhibits. Archives serve as authoritative resources that provide a one-stop shopping experience for a constituent organization, the management and employees on issues of current and past policies and about the company's history that is available to be supportive to their research (Fineberg, Samuel and Pankaj 7). Archives provide a company with the ability to tap archival resources for audit support, litigation, marketing, strategic planning, and website content. Additionally, it also offers an organization with information needed in recruitment preparation, evaluation programming, creating commemorative events and compiling timelines.

Archiving is crucial since it ensures that the institutional knowledge of an organization is preserved when employees seek to terminate their employment. It also provides that the same is available to the members of the organization and staff in future and currently (Steenbakkers 34). When institutional information is archived, staff members will need not to reinvent the data, and they will have to go to the archives and get the information. Availability of this knowledge helps in avoiding costly mistakes that can be made as it provides staff and association members with insights to past accomplishments as well as the challenges hence making for one to offer guidance on future policies, projects and actions.

Another importance of archives is that they can be revenue generating centres by providing digital access, reproduction, photograph licensing, and journal creation services. Archiving enhances an organization's productivity and also contributes positively to the management of knowledge. It reduces the time spent by the management and staff in responding to enquiries related to the organization's policies, history and practices (Steenbakkers 34).

Archives provide the public with evidence of previous activities and give more information about an organization. They increase an organization's sense of identity and also bring new employees to a better understanding of the culture of an organization. Records are not only created for historical research purposes but also for the provision of less complex events account as compared to secondary sources (Steenbakkers 33). Archiving is a process of accumulating historical records of an organization. It helps in providing the general public with the organizations' portfolio.

An archive is a valuable resource for an organization's product developers, sales staff, public relation, professional and the management. Documented organization materials can be easily located thus enabling the administration and the employees to capitalize on past activities, and the lessons learnt from them (Steenbakkers 35). It allows the management of an organization to use the past experiences to envision the ways forward for an organization. It helps in the preservation of important assets like an organization's product designs and samples. Most renowned companies use archived historical information as their PR and marketing tools.

To create an archive, an organization should be able to identify an archival project champion who should be accorded strong support from an organization. Also, a consensus among other staff members needs to be gathered to prevent the duo existence of an archive. To start with, a company needs to start an archive with clear goals and objectives (Theimer 2). It should be aligned with the organization's objectives and not the storage needs of a company. An organization's archive should serve to support the mission and the visions of a company. Upon sketching the goals of the archives, an organization should go forth and create a clear policy on what should be kept and what not to keep. An organization should archive documents and information that has historical value and legally required documents.

The archived materials need to be stored in a space which is climate-controlled using storage materials that are acid-free and also with security against water and fire damage. To create a useful archive, an organization needs to set up and generate enforcement of procedures and policies for the access, use and retrieval of data. Effective archives occur when an organization archive is being built on a framework that has an operational data management program (Theimer, 2). Therefore, a company needs to put its archives management program by the creation of an integrated, systematic plan for preservation and disposition of data.

Conclusion

Archiving is an essential aspect of an organization. Also, it gives a company's data and organizational culture to new and existing employees enabling an institution to run and make changes in their culture collectively. Archiving is vital in protecting an organization's data since it provides an organization with a platform to protect its information. Every organization needs to adopt archiving since it helps in creating a sense of pride in an organization's past activities. An organization's archives need to be protected from access from third parties to ensure efficient data storage and protection. Due to the prevalent cases of data breaching and cyber-attacks, organizations should be on the lookout by creating properly secured data archives. Archiving helps the management to track their previous financial progresses, thus enabling them to develop future aspirations easily.

It is therefore recommended that companies embrace the use of archives to store prior activities, information, employees and organizational culture. Archives are not only important to the internal environment of a company but also the external environment where accompany has to create its images either physically or through the use of websites (Steenbakkers, 38). It helps in creating the image of an organization. It can be therefore recommended that all organization take up the use of archives to store significant histories and activities of their businesses. Also, an effective archival facility needs to be given proper attention and protection by an organization. Adopting an archiving culture is vital as it enables a company to track its prior finances, profits and losses and the number of sales. It helps in envisioning and planning the future of an organization.

Works Cited

Abrams, David, Ron Baecker, and Mark Chignell. "Information archiving with bookmarks: personal Web space construction and organization." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1998.

Barreau, Deborah, and Bonnie A. Nardi. "Finding and reminding: file organization from the desktop." ACM SigChi Bulletin 27.3 (1995): 39-43.

Fineberg, Samuel A., and Pankaj Mehra. "Method and system for sc...