Years ago the Municipality of Alkmaar used Jalema’s paternoster cabinets. A great start to a long term cooperation. When the Municipality of Alkmaar faced a lack of space for the archive to be destroyed in 2008, they logically turned to Jalema for external archive storage as well. The cooperation then took on new forms again, because when the Municipality wanted to digitise, Archive-IT was also able to prove its added value. From paternoster cupboard to digitized files: the municipality of Alkmaar, in collaboration with Archive-IT, is realizing its ambitions.
External Archive
Frans Alleman, DIV Specialist at the municipality of Alkmaar, has fully supervised the various projects and is happy to share his experiences: “We have always had pleasant contacts and good experiences with Jalema. The choice for Archive-IT was a logical and familiar consequence. In addition to the archive to be destroyed, the files that Archive-IT has digitised are also stored externally. When we make a request from the files stored in Archive-IT’s premises, it is always delivered neatly and on time. You can rely on that.”
Proven service“The first project that Archive-IT digitized for the municipality of Alkmaar was the SMO and WWB files of the municipalities Graft de Rijp and Schermer. Eventually, the municipality of Alkmaar’s Schuldhulpverlening-dossiers and the cemetery files of Alkmaar and Graft de Rijp and Schermer were also digitized. We started digitising for a variety of reasons, the most important of which was the lack of space and the desire to work efficiently with digital files. We really used the SMO and WWB files as a pilot project to assess whether everything met our wishes and requirements. In view of the fact that a number of digitisation projects followed after the first project, you can guess that our experiences have been very positive.”
Innovative municipalityFrans Alleman indicates that the municipality of Alkmaar will be working completely digitally from January 2017. This does not mean, however, that the paper archive is a thing of the past. There are still some things in the Municipal Archives. “Our Municipal Secretary has expressed the ambition to be one of the most innovative municipalities in the Netherlands. We are well on the way and are tackling everything in phases. On the one hand, this keeps it manageable for us because we take care of the entire facilitation of these processes, but on the other hand, in this way, we also guarantee internal support as carefully as possible. It’s a great ambition and we will of course all work together to make this ambition come true”, says Frans Alleman.
Working mobile with the app
“By the way, I still regret that we do not use the Archive-IT Virtual File app. I am very charmed by this way of working on the move and absolutely see the added value. If I look at the cemetery files, for example, it would have been easy to take a picture of the gravestone on location and add it directly to the digital file. Unfortunately, we have made different choices internally and do not make use of this added value.”
We are proud of the fact that the Municipality of Alkmaar has repeatedly opted for Jalema and Archive-IT, ranging from paternoster cabinet, external storage to digitisation. Thank you for your trust in our organizations!