Libraries & Collections at Rutgers:
Special Collections and University Archives:
Records Management:
Overview of Records
Management at Rutgers University
The Records Management unit of Special Collections and University Archives provides
information to campus departments regarding the proper procedures for retaining and
discarding University records. The program assists departments with developing a
"Records Retention and Disposal Schedule," which would be in
compliance with Federal and State regulations.
Every office and department on campus is faced with problems of storage space, as
well as decisions about which records to keep and which to discard. The Rutgers
University Archives and Records Management Program offices assissts departments
with these problems and decisions. It strives to achieve economy and efficiency
in the creation, maintenance, and disposal of public records.
Records management affords legal protection for the institution by satisfying
federal and state statutory requirements. Records management also insures that
historically significant records be preserved to document university history.
Principles of Good Records Management
Record information should be managed systematically, effectively, and as economically
as possible. To assure that this function is carried out, the following criteria should
be established:
- Responsibility for management, preservation, and legal disposition of records
should be clearly assigned.
- Records should be easily accessible to institutional officials and to the public
through the use of indexes, systematic filing systems, and other techniques.
- Inactive or noncurrent records should be segregated from active records and stored
away from busy office areas.
- A vital records program should be developed to ensure the survival of records and
information necessary to resume and continue operations after serious fire or other catastrophe.
- Selected records with long minimum legal retention periods, where the original
records is no longer needed and a microfilmed copy will suffice, should be considered
for microfilming in accordance with guidelines provided by the archivist or records manager. Microfilm may be substituted for the original records once standards have been met.
- Computer applications should be employed where warranted.
- Records personnel should be trained in techniques of records and information
management. This would achieved through a series of workshops, the development
of a Records Management Manual for the University, and the establishment of records
retention schedules.
- Obsolete records should be disposed of periodically following legal procedures.
- Historically valuable records should be preserved in an archives.
Records Retention and Disposition
A key element in any Records Management program is records retention and disposition.
The advantages of a program for systematic retention and periodic legal disposition
of obsolete records are that it:
- Ensures that records are retained as long as they are actually needed for administrative, fiscal, legal, or research purposes.
- Ensures that records are promptly disposed of after they are no longer needed.
- Frees storage space and equipment for important records and for new records as they are created.
- Eliminates staff time required to service and sort through unneeded records to find information that is needed.
- Eliminates the potential fire hazard from storage of large quantities of old records.
- Facilitates the appraisal and preservation of archival records.
This policy will be reviewed and updated as needed.
