Records management is the logical and practical approach to the creation, maintenance, use and disposition of records, and the information that those records contain.
The University deals in many types of record both in physical format eg on paper and on electronic media, and in content from minutes of meetings, through student and financial records, to the results of research and clinical trials. There is a general need to reduce the amount of records that are kept beyond their useful life span, whilst maintaining the integrity of the University’s administration.
To support these needs, the University has introduced the following:
The Records Management and Archive Collection policies were approved by Council in April 2007.
The Guidelines and Procedures were developed as a result of a Records Management Project which involved some University Schools and Corporate Services’ Units completing a ‘weeding exercise’ in which they reviewed their holdings of paper records in various areas and consulted Retention & Disposal Schedules as to the need to retain them.
The Project developed a set of Schedules for the University that deal with the most relevant categories of records in terms of volume and usage. These will be developed and expanded as more and more Colleges, Schools, Departments and Units undertake a similar review.
Records and Documents: DRAFT Retention & Disposal Schedule, v0.4, 2 August 2006
These are supported by the Schedules developed for the HE sector by the Joint Information Systems Council (JISC) available both in printed and searchable database format:
HE Business Classification Scheme and Records Retention Schedule
If you have paper based records that need to be kept, but for a limited period of time, Special Collections (on behalf of the University) manages the Modern Records Store which can be used by any School or Unit with limited local storage.
