Keywords: digitization of archives; Outsourcing; capsula interna
With the advent of the information age, archival work has to be integrated into the trend of informationization. The most important thing of archives informatization construction is the construction of archives information resources, and the digital processing of archives is the highlight of archives information resources construction. In the face of a large number of archives catalogue input and archives digitization of original archives scanning, many people think: "Under the background of increasingly detailed social division of labor, increasing degree of specialization and rapid updating of digital technology, it has become increasingly inefficient and inadequate for archives departments to complete the digitization of their collections entirely by themselves." "Implementing digital outsourcing of archives", "This will not only save time and effort, but also ensure the quality and effect of digital archives." [1] "Now, the outsourcing of archival business has become a trend. As far as I know, there are more than 20 such companies in Beijing alone. " [2]
There are also many such outsourcing companies in our province, and many archives in our province have chosen to outsource the digital processing of archives. Can outsourcing really save time and effort and ensure quality and effect? "Internal package" means that the archives are digitized by the archives themselves. Is there no advantage? This problem deserves our analysis, research and thinking.
1 digital outsourcing of Henan provincial archives
According to the scientific research project of National Archives Bureau "Investigation on the Current Situation of Archives Security System in Henan Province" which I participated in in in 20 10, 24 archives in our province were investigated in 20 10, of which 5 were outsourced, 6 were not outsourced10 and 3 were not made public. According to the investigation and statistics of 20 1 1 of our province's archives bureau, "in terms of the digital processing form of archives, among the 8 provincial-level cities and 58 county-level archives in the province, * * * 7 prefecture-level archives and 60 county-level archives have chosen to process themselves, accounting for 38.9% and 63% of the total number of full-text databases respectively. *** 12 municipal archives and 17 county archives chose to outsource, accounting for 66.7% and 18% respectively. " Namely: "In terms of processing form, two-thirds of archives choose outsourcing processing and one-third choose self-processing." [3] Judging from these two groups of survey data, the trend of digital processing of archives in our province is that more and more archives choose outsourcing. And the scale of outsourcing is getting bigger and bigger. The largest amount of outsourcing in our province is that Zhengzhou Digital Archives Construction Project won the bid in July 20 1 1. Among them, the software procurement (software and digital processing part) of Zhengzhou digital archives construction project in the second bid section is 5.38 million yuan. [4]
2 Analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of "outsourcing" and "insourcing" in the digital processing of archives
"Outsourcing, also known as outsourcing, is an innovative way of enterprise management. Industrial enterprises, which originated in 1980s, mainly entrust external enterprises or groups to provide various business activities and services that should be completed by internal operation of the organization, so as to achieve the effects of reducing costs, saving time, improving efficiency and improving quality. Through business outsourcing, we can concentrate on completing the core business of the organization more effectively and pursuing higher mission goals. " [5] "Outsourcing" refers to outsourcing the digital processing of archives to a professional company for digital processing of archives. "Internal package" is the digital processing of archives with the help of the power of archives itself. The digital processing of archives has its particularity, and so does the archival work. Whether outsourcing can reduce costs, save time, improve efficiency and improve quality should also be analyzed in detail.
Funding 2. 1. Archives departments are relatively poor, that is, areas with good economic conditions. Most archives departments are still relatively poor and their funds are still limited. But outsourcing is backed by funds, and it is difficult to sustain without funds. And once outsourcing, especially after large-scale outsourcing, you will suffer from outsourcing "dependence", which makes you have to continue outsourcing. This is because outsourcing will not bring any improvement in information literacy to archivists. Their familiarity and operation level of computers and scanners have not been exercised, and their familiarity and application of software and hardware have not made any progress. They still can't handle it by themselves and still rely on outsourcing. The digital processing of archives is not a matter of one day or two, a year or two, nor can it be solved by outsourcing once or twice. Digital processing of archives is a long-term problem. Outsourcing will also make archives fall into a "quagmire" of lack of funds. Take a municipal archives as an example, the general collection of archives is between 6.5438+0.5 million volumes and 200,000 volumes. At least150,000 digital files are required. According to an average of 654.38+05 articles per volume, 2.25 million directories need to be entered. Calculated by each item of 0. 15 yuan, the required funds are 337,500 yuan. According to the average volume 100 pages, it is necessary to scan150,000 pages. Calculated by 0.3 yuan per page, the capital is 4,500,000 yuan, and the two items total 4,837,500 yuan. This is just the processing cost of entering the directory and scanning. If you want to process full-text retrieval, the cost is at least twice this cost. This is only calculated according to the document file. If it is a notarization, marriage, veterans and other livelihood files, there will be more items in the catalogue, and this is only the cost of digital processing of existing collection files. The 20-year archives kept by various units also have a problem of digital processing. Similarly, there is a charge, not a decimal. There is also a problem of digitization for the files generated in the future 10, because the so-called electronic files generated by various units are not really electronic files. The real electronic file should be an electronic file, which is a format of electronic file. This kind of electronic document does not need full-text scanning and digitization, and it should be 10 years after it is popularized to all prefecture-level library units. Even with the popularity of electronic documents, there are still a large number of non-electronic documents, such as meeting minutes, which need to be digitized. Even if some units will carry out digital processing, there will still be many units' files that need to be processed by archives. Therefore, it is a long-term task for archives to digitize files. If it is outsourcing, the capital investment is amazing. If it is an inner package, obviously, the savings are also amazing. Only by purchasing computer, scanner and other information hardware equipment with a fraction of outsourced funds can the hardware equipment of archives be upgraded to a very high level.
Outsourcing obviously greatly increases the operating cost of archives and the construction cost of digital archives, and most of the limited funds are invested in the digital outsourcing of archives, especially in some areas with poor economic conditions. It can be said that "tightening one's belt" is obviously not worth the loss. Other archives are reluctant to buy computers, scanners and other information hardware equipment, but invest limited funds in outsourcing, which deviates from the direction of archives informatization and is unsustainable.
2.2 quality. It can't be said that outsourcing can't guarantee the processing quality, but the measure to ensure the processing quality is to strengthen the supervision of outsourcing. The crux of the problem is that outsourcing companies, whether large companies or small workshops, are all commercial activities, pursuing speed and quantity, not quality. Outsourcing company "is not what many people see: the file outsourcing company is very strong and its personnel are of high quality." When I didn't go to our company, only a few people were archives majors, and the rest were junior college students, and none of them were archives majors. "[6] Even those who have a professional background in archival science are mostly newly graduated students, and it will take a long time to get familiar with archival science. In order to reduce the cost, some recruited processing personnel are not even college students, and the processing quality is difficult to guarantee. In order to ensure the quality of digital processing of archives, the only choice is to strengthen the inspection of archives, preferably 100% inspection. However, the digital processing of archives, whether it is the input or scanning of archives catalogue, has its particularity, and their quality depends on the quality of original archives. It is impossible to guarantee the quality by inputting the original files word by word. If there are errors in the original directory, you must first check the original file, and then proofread and correct it. Moreover, due to historical reasons, there are many missing words, typos and omissions in the manual catalogue. There are also problems with scanning files. There are many phenomena in files, such as directories without files, files without directories, few pages and misplaced. These problems can only be seen by people with certain archival work experience, and the processing personnel of outsourcing companies can hardly see them. In this way, to ensure the quality, 100% inspection is required, and 100% inspection requires considerable manpower from the archives. Basically, it's similar to what I did. If you are doing a full-text database, the workload of checking is basically the same as doing it yourself. There are two ways to establish a full-text database, one is manual entry, and the other is character conversion recognition through OCR after scanning. However, the recognition rate of OCR is generally 95%, which is only for scanned documents with clear text specifications. There are mistakes in either way, so proofreading must be 100%, and proofreading is still needed after correction. If the accuracy of 100% cannot be achieved, the recall rate and accuracy will be affected. If these two points cannot be achieved, the advantages of file informatization will not be reflected. Also, like the digital processing of archives of the Republic of China, revolutionary historical archives and archives in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, most of these archives are traditional Chinese characters, and most of the employees employed by outsourcing companies are young people who do not understand traditional Chinese characters, and they are even more confused about the writing style and language of archives. For the digital processing of these files, whether it is file directory processing, scanning processing or full-text digital processing, it is difficult to meet the quality requirements without three or five inspections, and the workload of archivists may be more time-consuming than doing it themselves. If archives must strictly control the quality, then the general outsourcing outcome is not a "win-win" but a "lose-lose". Due to frequent rework, outsourcing companies have increased their costs and basically made no money or even lost money. For archives, a lot of manpower inspection is invested, which is more time-consuming than doing it yourself, and the cost of outsourcing processing is also paid. Obviously, outsourcing has neither reduced costs nor saved time, nor improved efficiency and quality. It is impossible to concentrate on completing the core business of the organization more effectively and pursuing higher mission objectives.