Archiving Physical and Digital Records Together
The box in the basement and the folder on the drive describe the same matter. An archive that only knows about one of them is half an archive.
Most organisations have two archives that do not know about each other. One is physical: boxes, shelves, a storage contractor, a spreadsheet of box numbers. The other is digital: a shared drive, an old document system, a backup drive in a cupboard. Ask for "the file on the Harrison matter" and the answer depends on which archive the person you asked happens to know.
One record, two locations
A case in Herarx has a physical storage field alongside its digital files. "Box 2019-041, Shelf C, Offsite store" sits next to the scanned agreement and the filed emails. Search finds the case by title, reference or field value; the case tells you where both halves are.
Every file has its own physical storage note too, for the one original that had to be kept on paper — the deed, the signed will, the wet-ink contract — while its scan lives in the case.
Cataloguing a legacy archive
You do not need to scan everything. You need a case per matter with the metadata: parties, dates, the reference, the box. That is a CSV import from the storage contractor's list or the old index, mapped onto an archive template. Two afternoons for a few thousand boxes. Scanning can follow, matter by matter, as things are requested — and the scanned file joins a case that already exists.
Retention on the archive
An archived case is a case with a closed date and a retention date. The review rule asks, when the date comes, whether the box can be destroyed and the digital files purged — and records the answer. Disposal of the physical box is a task; disposal of the digital files is a deliberate deletion with an oversight log. Both are evidenced on the same record.
Finding things again
Tags across cases (by department, by matter type, by decade), the full-text search over titles, references and field values, and the cases list filtered by physical location: "everything in Box 2019-041" is a filter, not a trip to the basement.
Access
Archives are read far more than they are written. A Viewer role reads and exports without changing; a Case worker adds the scan when a box is retrieved; the owner sets retention policy. Sensitive historical matters go under Advanced Security so that "in the archive" does not mean "visible to everyone with a login".
