Document digitization spans archival scanning, cultural-heritage collections, workplace capture and the infrastructure needed to preserve and access digital records. The figures below distinguish observed administrative counts from surveys, estimates and forecasts, with each population, period and geography stated explicitly.
Key Document Digitization Statistics
These highlights summarize the most broadly useful measures:
- In August 2026, the U.S. National Archives Catalog listed 532,047,895 digitized pages.
- As of August 2026, the U.S. National Archives held 13.5 billion pieces of paper.
- In 2024, NARA accessioned 88,498 cubic feet of analog records in the United States.
- In 2022, 20% of European cultural-heritage collections had been digitized in ENUMERATE Core Survey 1.
- In 2014, approximately 17% of analogue collections had been digitally reproduced in ENUMERATE Core Survey 2.
- In 2015, 32% of digitally reproduced and born-digital heritage collections were online for general use among participating European institutions.
- In 2015, 41% of participating European cultural-heritage institutions had a written digitization strategy.
- In a 2023 survey reported in 2024, 54% of organizations fully digitized payroll across the UK, U.S., France and Germany.
- In the same survey population, only 28% of organizations fully digitized their mailroom.
- In 2023, 65% of respondents regularly used multifunction-printer scanning for document digitization.
- Respondents in the 2024 workplace forecast expected multifunction-printer scanning to grow 7.39% in the following year.
- In 2022, 69% of surveyed organizations still stored customer records in paper form across five geographies and three verticals.
- In 2022, 52% of surveyed companies had not fully digitized payslips.
- In FY2025, the National Archives Catalog recorded 129 million page views.
- In FY2022, the Library of Congress managed 174 petabytes of digital storage.
- In FY2022, Library of Congress websites recorded 151 million visits.
- In 2015, 47% of participating European cultural-heritage institutions had no standards-based long-term digital-preservation solution.
- In 2017, 37.6% of U.S. public libraries had engaged in digitization during the prior three years.
Contents
- How much archival material is online
- Cultural-heritage digitization trends
- Workplace adoption and process maturity
- Scanning, capture and paper reduction
- Access, preservation and infrastructure
- Backlogs, costs and remaining gaps
How Much Archival Material Is Online? Document Digitization Statistics
The National Archives provides a useful scale marker, but its measures are not interchangeable. Its catalog page count is an online digitized-page measure, while holdings totals include material that has not necessarily been scanned and electronic records include born-digital records.
| NARA measure | Period | Reported figure |
|---|---|---|
| Digitized pages in the Catalog | August 24, 2026 | 532,047,895 |
| Paper holdings | August 24, 2026 | 13.5 billion pieces |
| Electronic records | August 24, 2026 | More than 33 billion, reported as 1 petabyte |
| Analog accessions | 2024 | 88,498 cubic feet |
| Electronic accessions | 2024 | 463 terabytes |
Source: National Archives by the Numbers. Catalog pages are not the same as all NARA holdings, and the electronic total includes born-digital records.
Historical performance data shows that annual digitization output varied against targets. NARA reported 36.5 million pages against a 40-million-page FY2017 target, 53.1 million against 65 million in FY2018, 92.6 million against 90 million in FY2019, and 120.9 million against 115 million in FY2020.
The FY2020 total included 28.3 million archival pages posted, more than 20.4 million of them from third-party partners. At NARA’s 2022 milestone, partner-provided images accounted for more than 153 million pages, while NARA images on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons totaled 3 million as of August 24, 2026.
These external-platform and partner figures should not be treated as the complete NARA digitization total.
Source: NARA FY 2022 Annual Performance Plan and FY 2020 Annual Performance Report.
Cultural-Heritage Digitization Trends in Libraries and Museums
ENUMERATE surveys measure participating European cultural-heritage institutions, not every institution in Europe. They also distinguish having a digital collection from digitizing analogue collections, placing material online and maintaining preservation policies.
| ENUMERATE measure | Period | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Institutions with a digital collection | 2012 | 83% |
| Collections digitized | 2012 | 20% |
| Collections still needing digitization | 2012 | 57% |
| Institutions with a digitization strategy | 2012 | 34% |
| Institutions with a digital collection | 2014 | 87% |
| Analogue collections digitally reproduced | 2014 | Approximately 17% |
| Analogue collections still needing digitization | 2014 | About 52% |
| Institutions with a distinct digitization policy | 2014 | 36% |
Source: ENUMERATE results. The 2012 and 2014 survey results are not directly comparable in every respect because participating institutions and definitions differ.
Core Survey 3 in 2015 found that 84% of institutions had a digital collection, 60% had born-digital items, and 41% had a written digitization strategy. Only 32% of digitally reproduced and born-digital heritage collections were online for general use, while 45% of descriptive metadata was online; libraries reported 68% metadata availability and museums 31%.
Digital preservation remained a separate maturity issue. In 2015, 26% of institutions had a management-endorsed written digital-preservation strategy, and 47% had no standards-based long-term digital-preservation solution.
Workplace Document Digitization Adoption and Process Maturity
The Quocirca workplace findings come from an October 2023 online survey of 502 IT and business decision-makers in organizations with at least 250 employees across the UK, U.S., France and Germany. The results are self-reported process measures rather than standardized audits.
| Workplace process or method | Period | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll fully digitized | 2023 survey / 2024 report | 54% |
| Payroll partially digitized | 2023 survey / 2024 report | 38% |
| Mailroom fully digitized | 2023 survey / 2024 report | 28% |
| Regular multifunction-printer scanning | 2023 survey / 2024 report | 65% |
| Expected multifunction-printer scanning growth | 2024 expectation | 7.39% |
| Expected mobile-scanning growth | 2024 expectation | 6.77% |
Source: The Future of Document Capture. The growth figures are expectations, not realized growth.
The pattern is uneven process maturity: payroll was fully digitized in 54% of organizations, but only 28% had fully digitized their mailroom. A further 38% had partially digitized payroll, showing why “digitized” can mean different levels of completion across processes.
Scanning, Document Capture and Paper-Reduction Data
Managed print and scanning contracts provide another view of workplace digitization. In the same Quocirca survey, 54% of organizations used a managed print service, and 81% of managed-print-service users said scanning was included in their contract.
Only 12% of organizations used a cost-per-scan contract, although 49% of respondents were very interested in one. Interest therefore measures a possible future direction, not current adoption.
A separate commissioned Quocirca survey reported by PFU/Ricoh covered organizations with 250 to more than 1,000 employees across five geographies and three verticals. In 2022, 69% still stored customer records in paper form, and 52% had not fully digitized payslips.
Paper handling was mixed: 10% of paper copies of important documents were securely destroyed, while 41% were left lying around the office. Among respondents, 22% chose paper over digital for security reasons, and 39% cited legal-compliance reasons for paper remaining in processes; these are perceived reasons, not proof that paper was legally required.
Source: Clinging on to paper: over half (52%) of organisations haven’t fully digitised payslips. Paper categories may coexist and do not necessarily sum to all document handling.
Document Digitization Access, Preservation and Infrastructure
Digitization is not complete when an image is scanned. Access analytics, storage and physical preservation measure different outcomes and should not be read as page-count equivalents.
The National Archives Catalog recorded 129 million page views in FY2025 and 87 million page views in FY2026 year-to-date as of August 24, 2026. The latter is an incomplete fiscal-year total, and page views are not unique users or document reads.
The Library of Congress managed 174 petabytes of digital storage in FY2022. Its websites recorded more than 151 million visits and 520.3 million page views that year, while the institution carried out 8.7 million preservation actions on physical collections.
Source: The Library of Congress, By the Numbers. Storage includes digital collections and operational data, and preservation actions are not digitization outputs.
Document Digitization Backlogs, Costs and Remaining Gaps
The remaining work is shaped by staffing, training, rights, metadata, preservation and budget capacity. U.S. public-library evidence is from a 2017 report covering the prior three years and focuses primarily on unique local collections.
In the United States, 37.6% of public libraries had engaged in digitization activities during the prior three years, while 92% had locally significant, unique physical collections. Among reported barriers and support needs, 61.4% identified insufficient staff training or expertise as a major barrier; 55.6% identified imaging-best-practices training as potentially helpful, 47.5% identified copyright-risk-assessment training, and 47.0% identified metadata-best-practices training.
Source: Advancing the National Digital Platform: The State of Digitization in US Public and State Libraries. Training demand is not evidence that training was completed, and the collection statistic is not a digitization rate.
ENUMERATE Core Survey 3 estimated an average digital-collections budget of €276,471 per institution in 2015. It also estimated that an average of 8 full-time-equivalent people worked on digital-collection activities: 6 paid staff and 2 volunteers.
That budget is an institutional average, not a per-page scanning cost, and the staffing figure covers digital-collection activities broadly. Together with the 52% of analogue collections still needing digitization in Core Survey 2 and the 47% without a standards-based long-term preservation solution in Core Survey 3, the data shows why online access, digitization output and sustainable preservation must be measured separately.