Custodial Services embarks on massive record digitization project

IPF’s Custodial Services is making a digital leap forward. A team of student employees is working to digitize their large collection of analog records, a project led by Andrew Bassila, business office manager in Custodial Services. Once  complete, this transition will streamline custodial operations. 

“Once digitized, our records will be accessible online and easily searchable,” explains Bassila. Shona Key, Custodial office assistant, is digitizing new files simultaneously. “Supervisors will be able to access important documents like personnel files and building agreements on their phones or computers, reducing the need for paper files.”

This shift will also allow them to repurpose file storage areas into productive workspaces. The benefits extend beyond Custodial Services. “This initiative will save us time and also reduce waste for IPF and MSU,” says Bassila. The digital system will significantly cut down the time spent creating, organizing, and retrieving documents while reducing paper waste across the board.

The digitization team, consisting of students Darien Courter, Faith Dawson, and Gabe Meyerson, has been instrumental in the project’s success. “These students are doing most of the heavy lifting,” says Bassila. “Not only are they digitizing all new employee records, but they’re also tackling a huge backlog of paper personnel files, some dating back to the 1980s. It’s a complex process, but they’ve got it down.”

With over 380 active employee records and another 800 inactive records to scan, plus various other documents like job postings, agreements, and training seminar records, the project was expected to take until the end of the fall semester. However, thanks to the hard work of the student team, it was completed before summer ended. “The students were quick, efficient, and accurate, which made a huge difference in speeding up the process,” says Bassila.

Bassila’s vision for the project is to create a sustainable and robust process for future record management, avoiding the challenges of past digitization efforts. “I’ve seen the difficulties that come with piecemeal digitization attempts, so my goal is to create a system that will integrate seamlessly into our operations going forward.”