UK Document Management

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is a fixed-layout format used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.^[1] Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics that compose the documents.

PDF is an open standard, and recently took a major step towards becoming the ISO 32000.^[

When the PDF first came in the early 1990s, its general adoption was slow.^[4] At that time, the PDF-creation tools (Acrobat) and the viewing and printing software had to be bought. Early versions of PDF had no support for external hyperlinks, reducing its usefulness on the World Wide Web; the additional size of the PDF document compared to plain text meant significantly longer download times over the slower modems common at the time, and rendering the files was slow on less powerful machines. Additionally, there were competing formats such as Envoy, Common Ground Digital Paper and even Adobe’s own PostScript format (.ps); in those early years, the PDF file was mainly popular in desktop publishing workflow.

What is a document Management System?
A document management system (DMS) is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. The term has some overlap with the concepts of Content Management Systems and is often viewed as a component of Enterprise Content Management Systems and related to Digital Asset Management, Document imaging, Workflow systems and Records Management systems. Contract Management and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) can be viewed as either components or implementations of ECM. (more…)

Electronic Records and Legal Admissibility

For whom is this guidance intended?

1.      This guidance is intended for University staff with responsibility for ensuring that the electronic records they create are assigned an appropriate legal weight.  It is of particular relevance to staff who:

a.       need to maximise the legal weight of their records for statutory or regulatory reasons;

b.      are responsible for the information in corporate databases;

c.       are looking to improve or update their current electronic filing systems or databases. (more…)