Records Management Training

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Records, who is responsible?

The responsibility of records management falls on all persons within any organization. These responsibilities include maintaining properly ordered files, which can be called upon to be produced as part of their day to day job duties. Each department head, who is responsible for all employees within their jurisdiction, must insure that records are properly organized and that they meet their responsibilities to those records. Specific duties and responsibilities include:

1. Determining what records are produced and housed in their respective departments.

2. Determining if their records are permanent or non-permanent using the records retention schedule.

3. Identifying vital records and establishing procedures for their protection.

4. Destroying records in accordance with the published disposition schedules.

5. Arranging with the University Archivist transfer of permanent historical records.

Understanding Records Retention Abbreviations

ACT: active. The period while a matter is active.

ACY: ACT+CY. The period of time starting after the matter is no longer active and after the end of the current calender year.

CY: current year. A period of time starting after the end of the current calender year-December 31.

D: day

IND: indefinite. A long period of time that cannot be determined in advance.

M: months.

SUP: superseded. Retain records until they are replaced by more current versions.

Source: Donald S. Skupsky., Records Retention Procedures: Your Guide to Determine How Long to Keep Your Records and How to safely Destroy Them! (Englewood, Colorado: Information Requirements Clearinghouse, 1994).

Understanding Records Retention Schedule Groups

ACC - Accounting

ADM- Administrative

EDU- Education

FIN- Financial

LEG- Legal

PER- Personnel

REF- Reference

Source: Donald S. Skupsky., Records Retention Procedures: Your Guide to Determine How Long to Keep Your Records and How to safely Destroy Them! (Englewood, Colorado: Information Requirements Clearinghouse, 1994).

Records Management Cheat Sheet

Or what to do when you don't know where to start?

1. What records does your office create (by file folder)?

2. What records do the employees in your department have?

3. List records and then match them to the records retention series.

4. If a file folder has both official and non-official records, use official records for deciding on retention (see: official and non-official records for the distinction between them). If there are duplicates of official records, use the same retention as the non-duplicate official record.

5. If the file folder has multiple documents with differing retention periods, use the documents with the longest retention.

6. Write the retention on the file folder and the date of destruction or transfer. Do this for each folder (unless you know a complete group of file folders having all the same dates and belonging to the same series).

7. When the date of destruction or transfer arrives, fill out the appropriate form and send documents to be destroyed or to the archives.

8. Get further help from University Archivist.