Eloquent Systems Inc. - Corporate Archives Management (Duke Energy)

Duke Energy is a leading energy company based in Charlotte, NC. Established in 1904, it has grown tremendously, both organically and through numerous mergers and acquisitions. The result of this longevity and growth is that the company has absorbed a considerable collection of documents and artifacts, which it stores in-house in corporate archives.

The Duke Energy Corporate Archives consist of four major collections comprising more than 140,000 records and 6,000 cubic feet of material. Supporting the corporate memory at Duke Energy are documents and artifacts that date all the way from 1788 to the present day.

The archives are staffed by one professional archivist and one clerical assistant. While maintained primarily for internal purposes, the archives are also made available to serious academics for scholarly research and occasionally for genealogical requests.

Duke Energy has been using technology from Eloquent Systems Inc. for over 10 years. It recently upgraded to the Web-based Eloquent Archives solution, powered by Eloquent’s WebGENCAT engine, because the existing DOS-based GENCAT system had not been meeting all of the company’s needs.

Duke Energy’s administrators prefer the Eloquent Archives solution because, as with all Eloquent products, they never have to worry about running out of storage space. The fields do not have fixed lengths so the company can add as much or as little narrative as is necessary to describe a particular object. This immense flexibility is particularly beneficial to an organization like Duke Energy, which has a very large and disparate array of records and artifacts in its inventory.

Dennis Lawson is Duke Energy's Archivist, and has used Eloquent Archives extensively for many years. Dennis says, "The Eloquent system is very powerful and flexible. It has met our needs fabulously. Likewise, the Eloquent team are great people to work with. They are quick, responsive, and have never failed us. As such, I have recommended the Eloquent solution to a number of people."

Another advantage of the Eloquent system is that artifacts can be indexed at the item, box, or series level and the system easily allows for the creation of subcollections. In addition, considering the volume of data being searched, Duke Energy has found that that the Eloquent solution enables extremely fast and powerful searches. Users accessing he system are often amazed at the speed of access.

The company also appreciates the customer service support provided by Eloquent Systems. Duke Energy’s administrators always purchase the annual support package and have found the Eloquent team to be invariably quick and responsive to their needs.

Collections at Duke Energy

Legal Collection	This collection of litigation case files for the legal department currently includes 40,000 to 50,000 litigation files.

Photograph Collection	Over 50,000 historical photographs are indexed in the system, including thousands of construction progress photographs from the many infrastructure projects Duke Energy has been involved with over the years.

3-Dimensional Artifacts	A listing of over 1,000 historical artifacts, many of which are housed at local museums; at times, this collection has included a 110-foot-tall stiff-leg oil-drilling derrick and a steam locomotive.

Chronology Collection	An electronic encyclopedia of the history of Duke Energy; as searches are undertaken by the archives team, they are referenced in the Chronology Collection to minimize duplicate searches in the future. Common questions include: Who was the first president of Duke Energy? Or, when was this generating station constructed?

About Duke Energy
Duke Energy is a leading energy company located in the Americas. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC., Duke Energy is a Fortune 500 company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol DUK. After its recent merger with Cinergy, Duke Energy has approximately $36 billion in market capitalization, $70 billion in assets, and over 5.4 million retail electric and gas customers. The company owns and operates more than 30,000 megawatts of electric generation, 17,500 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines, and 250 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage capacity.

About Eloquent Systems Inc.
Founded in 1975, Eloquent Systems Inc. has been solving the knowledge management problems of corporate, government, legal, medical, and heritage institutions around the world. Eloquent Systems is a leader in producing efficient solutions for archives, museums, libraries, and corporate records management.

All Eloquent applications are built using Eloquent’s WebGENCAT engine, an extremely fast and robust Web-based tool for powering large information collections. Eloquent solutions can be hosted by the client’s internal IT department or through Eloquent’s own convenient hosting service.

Eloquent has a global customer base, many whom have been with the company since the early 1980s, including Fortune 500 companies and leading associations, law firms, and medical research facilities. Aside from its own team, Eloquent has a network of associates and agents across North America to help service customers directly.