Officially, Oct. 13, 2012 is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. We at Rapid Refile would like to commemorate this worldwide date of disaster awareness by outlining how business leaders can do their part to reduce disaster risk.

(more…)

Looking at a row of framed family portraits or framed certificates hung on the wall, it’s easy to assume those precious items are safe from damage. Certainly, framing documents and photographs protects them to some degree from fading, dust and other forms of damage. However, even archival-quality framing can’t protect prized documents from water damage. If a flood, broken pipe or excessive humidity has damaged your documents or photographs, read on for our primer on how to dry wet documents and pictures that are framed. (more…)

Remember the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the priceless artifact Indiana Jones has been fighting to preserve is wheeled into storage in a yawning warehouse? Schools and universities often have similar storage areas for their “treasures” – i.e., their academic records. Raiders of the Lost Ark ends with the implication that the ark will probably never see the light of day again, but the opposite is true for school records. Schools must be able to provide students’ records on request at any time, even decades after a diploma has been granted.

(more…)

Every generation must navigate technology shifts. Some of us remember the change from typewriters to computer keyboards. Others grew up with landlines but now wield cell phones. Disaster recovery services and the companies we serve face a similar technological shift, from hard copies of important papers to electronic documents. At this point, it is clear that electronic medical records (EMR) will dominate tomorrow’s health world. Here are a few advantages to storing health records electronically, whether in the internet cloud or on remote hard drives: (more…)

A recent survey of records managers and executives found that there’s a digital gap dividing many businesses from effective records management. The report, conducted by Ole Business Services, found that while 91 percent of businesses have a place to store paper records, just 70 percent have set up an electronic repository. Perhaps this is because most businesses equate document scanning with disaster recovery. Documents are often translated to electronic storage precisely because doing so protects the firm against unforeseen disasters such as flooding and fires. However, there are many other advantages to arranging for document scanning services, as we explore below.
(more…)