In this column I review records management at Goshen College. The question that I am testing in this series of articles is whether a records schedule can be a useful tool for working with active, non-current and archival records. I have come across only one or two Mennonite organizations that use such schedules.
Records are important.
However, the long-range retention of all records is not important. Since not all records have equal value, discretion must be exercised in determining what records are retained, what records are destroyed, where records are located, who becomes the archivist for non-current records, and what are the archival functions. My proposal is that creating such a records schedule would help managers decide which records are retained and which are destroyed. A schedule is basically a list of existing records. As one who works with older records, I tend to keep things.