Usually, permanent record material is original material produced by you and the personnel in your office or command, but not all original material is permanent record material. A few examples of temporary material frequently found in the geophysics community are the training reports, inventories, and general correspondence. Files for a specific subject may contain mixed material both permanent-record information and temporary information. Files that contain predominately permanent-record information are permanent files. Permanent files may contain copies of temporary information that directly relates to the information in the file, or supports the work or research.
Temporary files contain mostly temporary information.
Any information of permanent value in a temporary file must be separated from the file when the temporary information is destroyed. Files are normally held in drawers of filing cabinets or safes, and separate file folders are used to contain each subject file. Many different types and grades of file folders are available in the supply system. Use of a specific type of file folder may be designated by the command or left to the user s choice. For ease of finding and retrieving material, however, similar size file folders should be used in each set of files.