The Interfolio Blog

The ability to store digital documents online has huge benefits: more documents can be stored, less physical space is taken up, file-transfer is easier.  But what do you do when a few thousand documents turns into a few million documents, which is often the case for entire colleges or universities.  Where do you find things, and how?  How do you organize them?

Enter search applications.  Many institutions are using various platforms to plow through their online administrative data and organize all the multiplying number of documents.  They don't need to worry about finding things in the pile.  These applications will just find it all for you.  While many have been available to individuals and corporations for some time, they are just now starting to surface in the higher ed space with the migration from hard-copy to soft-copy filing.

A few purposes

    - Organize internal administrative documents: search a lot of documents, organize them by department, decrease hard copy clutter.
    - Offer easier information gathering for students, faculty and staff: Organize things like course options, information on various school organizations, or university events in such a way that makes them much more accessible to the community.
    - Easily created subgroups of internal documents with varying levels of access: The ability to control who can see what is made a lot more easily with some of these applications.

Types

    - Commercial equipment: Large, powerful applications with the ability to sort through millions of documents at varying levels of sharing and privacy settings.  Google's Search Appliance is a popular one.
        - Pros: Powerful searching capabilities with high accuracy and control, and low-effort level on the part of the institution.
        - Cons: Expensive, takes a lot of organization, and may be more power then is needed for many institutions. 
    - Site-search software: Less powerful, less expensive software applications with many of the same search capabilities.
        - Pros: Ability to search large numbers of documents, less expensive than commercial options, with plenty of power for many small to mid-sized institutions.
        - Cons: Fewer privacy options, less control over the system as a whole, less ability to search huge numbers of documents.
    - Basic site search: For people who decide they really only need to access a certain portion of their documents on a regular basis, this offers enough capabilities, at a much lower cost.
        - Pros: Much lower cost, and a better option for those needing a lower level of capability.
        - Cons: Limited search power, ability to cull through fewer documents.
    - In-house development: Institutions with the capabilities and resources available in-house can develop search options to suit their needs.
        - Pros: Customizable, sometimes less expensive than using an external options, entirely internally controlled.
        - Cons: Can take time, requires full plan, may sometimes not work to the level that already-available options can, and can sometimes be more expensive than existing market options.