2008 Records Management Liaison Annual Meeting

June 11, 2008
8:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Pleasants Family Assembly Room, Wilson Library

Meeting Agenda

RML Story of the Year

And the winner is

Valerie Miller, University Manager, UNC Craniofacial Center

One of the things that was on my eventual plate was to clean out the files in the attic. I had the occasion to go up to the attic to find a file. I found the craniofacial boxes-about 60 of them, full of old blue patient files with discolored pages of various origin, some of them were 20+ years old. The boxes were on shelves and labeled, and I am NOT KIDDING, A, B, C, etc. Not a date, nor a title, nothing to identify them as Craniofacial, just a big letter. I could not find the file. That was an enlightening day and I will save this for another day. Then I got a call from the Psychiatry Department in the Hospital. The person wanted to know where they could deliver the 31 boxes of craniofacial patient files they had used for research purposes and had in storage for the last 5 years. What???? What kind of files were they, I asked? They are very old, was the reply, 20 to 25 years old, most of them. The boxes were marked with big lettersm like L, M, N. With the help of some volunteers they worked with a system to cull the files no longer needed. We have gone through all of the boxes and have purged 31 boxes of files and another 20 boxes are awaiting their demise.
We are now going through our file room and culling the contents for those files. We have an active file spreadsheet with formulas in it that will calculate the retention dates for these files. We have gotten through the letter C in the file room and now I have no volunteers.
Current files we labeled with a colored dot associated with 2008. We will change the dot color for 2009, etc. So after 5 years, some poor soul, maybe the same one doing the purging, can just go through the files and pull the appropriate files based on the dot color.
This has turned into a BIG BIG job but I have no choice except to move forward since I am running out of room in the file room. I hesitate to send any boxes to the attic because there is no process in place to protect the integrity of the contents for anything in that huge space. But I will prevail, given time and a new crop of volunteers. One must remain optimistic, hopeful and most importantly, creative.

This year's Runner-Up: Sandra H. Void, Business Manager, Medical Sciences Teaching Labs, UNC School of Medicine
We had to move for the third time since I started this job. I said: If I have to move these files one more time I will scream. After meetings with Caroline and other MSTL staff members, we are happy to announce that we have an approved schedule as of February 7, 2008. I can now refer to my approved Records Retention Schedule as my files bible. Whenever I want to know what to do with a document or a file series I just look in the book. It directs me and tells me all the things that I am now Approved to retain or destroy. Each time I had to pull a file for whatever the reason I used it as an opportunity to make an immediate decision on its retention and disposition value. I am proud to say that the Shred It bin became my best friend.

Records Management Jeopardy
Questions and Answers

And the winners are&hellip
Lori Harris, Department of Asian Studies
Lisa Lalla, School of Dentistry
Connie Conway, Department of Atheletics

Haiku Contest

And the winner is&hellip
So many papers,
Stacks and piles for years ago,
Decaying to dust.
by Rebecca Ashubrn, UNC Property Office

Second place goes to&hellip
Shred these records, now.
Can't, schedule says they're not old.
Two more years, then shred.
by Arlene Medder, Auxiliary Services

And honorable mention&hellip
We have a schedule?
Yes, we do; have you seen it?
Do you follow it?
by Arlene Medder, Auxiliary Services