I know, @ GRCC we had to convert everthing from hand archives back to 1900 when installing Peoplesoft Learning Solutions.

Not to mention the 300 different record types over the years. GRCC was just keeping the files as text records on disk for everything after ~1972 and the paper archives... but then a brief fire in the archiving vault destroyed some other types of paper archives. This happened just as GRCC was switching to Peoplesoft, so I am sure you can guess what was done right away.

Every piece of paper was physically "stabilized", then scanned @ 300DPI. Then the data was hand enetered 3 times, any discrepancies were addressed. Then the data was imported 3 times and then merged. If any data was inconsistent it was addressed.

It increased the amount of data in the DB by a doubling magnitude. It was also determined that the other various formats needed to be converted to Peoplesoft to.

Oh, GRCC also required any "originals" (scanned or original record format) be attached to the student for later request of verification. OUCH. Peoplesoft charged and arm and a leg for than one.