The meeting was held in Elliott University Center at UNC Greensboro. Ed Southern served as meeting moderator, Barbara Tookey local arrangements coordinator and Suellyn Lathrop, secretary.
Present: Chris Black, Lillian Brewington, Mark Brittain, Betty Carter, Janis Holder, Frank Holt, Suellyn Lathrop, Madeleine Perez, Gloria Pitts, Adina Riggins, Ed Southern, Barbara Tookey, Hermann Trojanowski, Jan Whitfield, and Helen Wykle.
Ed Southern opened the meeting and asked us to introduce ourselves.
Janis Holder led a discussion entitled "EPA/SPA Personnel Records Discussion" This was followed by a presentation by Frank Holt entitled: "EPA Personnel Records Inventory Module.
A question and answer period followed the presentation:
What is the commitment of UNC GA to records management? Could/should directives come from the top down for more standardization? What has happened in the past?
Answers/Discussion: UNC CH has been writing General Administration records schedules. GA will probably use the module and enforce it.
Betsy Bunting of GA, intended to be here. She has been involved for 5 or 6 years giving us advice and will continue to do so. The consensus is that GA generally takes the position of DON'T do something rather than coming out with specific regulations. GA allows individual campuses autonomy on many issues and takes a hands-off approach.
Each campus is at a different level. There are funding issues on all sorts of things. So GA allows each to do what they can to comply with broad guidelines. UNC Charlotte Human Resources has decided not to use the UNC CH personnel records module, but Madeleine Perez finds it helpful in dealing with the records.
Why doesn't General Administration come up with standards?
Answers/Discussion: There is so much going on. Not sure that GA wants to issue a mandate without the money to back it up.
The new general schedule will have the signature of the UNC System President, so there will be support.
Adina Riggins gave a presentation Information & Records Management: An Archivist's Experience at UNC-W.
A question and answer period followed the presentation:
How much time do you put into records management? Answer/Discussion: Adina told us that it is about 10% of her job description. She doesn't do much more than that. She answers questions as they come in and collects material for the University Archives. Adina commented that records management could easily be a full time job.
Barbara Tookey told us about workshops that she has been conducting at UNCG. The first workshop was attended by 144 people. Another workshop will be held next Monday. She sent letters to department heads asking them to identify liaisons and send them to the workshop. She has obtained lists from Facilities Services of offices that are in the process of moving. Barbara contacts those offices and offers to help with weeding files and scheduling records. She has also been asked to give a presentation regarding records management to executive staff. She tries to look for ways to help people, ways to make compliance easier to achieve. She may bring in an efficiency expert to her next meeting. And they are looking at having an e-mail management workshop.
Ed Southern told us that it is important to get a start even if it is small. We should try to get the ear of someone in upper administration to back us up. A commitment from a vice chancellor or university attorney can help tremendously. Records management reduces legal risk and saves money. Although the money saved doesn't show up in the bottom line as a profit margin activity, we can still help our university's save money. Ed's staff at the Department of Cultural Resources will work with us. We can use the "Destruction of Records Without a Schedule Forms," to help units clear out large amounts of old records. This will promote good will and find historical records. There is no point putting tasks on people that they can't do. People don't want to do records management. The responsibility is on the office manager to meet federal and state regulations.
Barbara asked if the office managers or records managers ultimately responsible?
Ed said that the records managers are to raise awareness of the issues. We are to let our supervisors know about legal requirements, workshops, websites, etc. Unless we have administrative clout we cannot be held responsible.
Barbara sends out a letter from the Vice Chancellor to all department heads about the records management program.
Ed said that awareness is what it's all about. He has conducted workshops that have had no real results on campuses because there was no support from the administration.
Frank Holt explained that he used to participate in the new employee orientation, but that in recent years records management has been bumped from the program in order to make room for recycling. Madeleine Perez has tried to get training workshops set up through Human Resources and was told that in order to do it, HR would have to bump another training off the list. She finds out which offices are moving, sends out annual notices regarding records management and sends copies of program schedules when offices ask for them. Suellyn Lathrop has conducted two workshops using OneStop and the campus announce list to publicize them and have people sign up. This isn't through Human Resources, but she issues her own certificate to the participants that they can show their supervisors.
Madeleine also said that the university attorney is supportive of her efforts. Whenever he gets a records retention management question, he forwards them to her and lets the person asking the question know that there is a records manager on campus. She intends to post the new general schedule on the university attorney's website when it comes out.
Suellyn mentioned that she has posted the ECU general schedule in the on-line Business Manual that is used by all office managers.
Ed Southern turned the discussion to the next meeting date and place. After some discussion it was decided that he will check with Betsy Bunting regarding having the meeting at UNC GA in Chapel Hill. The meeting will be in mid to late September. Suellyn will check on the timing of NCLA and send out three dates for voting as we did for this meeting.
The next item on the agenda was a discussion of the new general schedule that is being developed. Ed explained to the group that due to constraints on staff and time at the Department of Cultural Resources, he had suggested that Janis Holder, Madeleine Perez, Frank Holt, Barbara Tookey, Hal Keiner and Suellyn Lathrop draft a records schedule based on 1991 general schedule, autotext, state general schedule, UNC CH Registrar's schedule and the ECU general schedule and other documents. This is not an exclusive group. These are the most active records management programs in the UNC System. The draft will go out to all UNC records managers for review before being finalized. Ed asked the members of the drafting committee to discuss the work to date with the group.
Discussion:
Madeleine stated that the first official working meeting will be held April 15th here at UNCG. The committee has looked at a lot of general schedules at other universities around the country. We are looking at various formats and debating using narrative, spreadsheet or database. The 1991 schedule is over ten years old. It doesn't include records that we need information about. We want to get as many series on the general records schedule that can be found from Chapel Hill to UNCP to the School of the Arts with a minimum retention. The hope is that this will help get records management started on all campuses. We want a relatively authoritative document that we can use without concern regarding legal issues.
UNC C currently has between 60 to 75% of the offices covered with program schedules. Madeleine is having trouble with the rest of the offices. This general schedule will allow her to narrow her focus with those ofices. It will make it easier for Raleigh to review schedules and should reduce the turn around time to get a program schedule approved.
Ed said that NC State is working on records management. Their attorney has contacted Ed regarding retention of general administrative routine records and the unviversity website. A schedule was prepared for those two series at the top level that will cover all those sorts of records throughout NC State. Other campuses might want to think in terms of having a schedule adopted at the highest level. That would eliminate the need for repetition and cover a lot of ground.
Barbara reiterated that the general schedule will have the minimum retention time for each type of record. The schedule should be customizable to each campus depending upon how much we each want to build upon it. It would work for most campuses. Barbara also stated that we are pretty open on format at this point and that we will be citing legal sources that will back us up when using the schedule.
Suellyn discussed customization. She stated that the current ECU general schedule lists the office of record for each series. Those offices should consult their program schedule in conjunction with the general schedule. If office of record is used in the new general schedule, each school could change the title of the office of record as needed.
Ed reiterated that the schedule can be adapted to the needs of each campus. He expects that UNC CH will do more with it than other campuses. He does not expect that the schedule will cover EVERY record on EVERY campus. We should remember that we cannot legally destroy records unless they are covered on a general schedule or a program schedule. This document should facilitate the creation of program schedules. It will be a compromise. The retentions will be the minimum, records may be kept longer if needed.
Can the schedule be on-line? Yes! It should also probably be printable. There may be people on campuses that would rather have a hard copy than checking on-line. A follow up question was asked about having a link from library websites to it. That would be most appropriate.
Madeleine stated that some of us want it to be the answer to all of our problems. It will cover as much as we can on a campus and then we will work on special records / unique records. This general schedule is being designed to cut the redundancy of the 1991 general schedule. We want it to be user friendly and every campus needs that. She gave an example of current problems of getting a program schedule approved. She has worked for 2 1/2 years with the Housing Department to finalize a program schedule. The schedule has been approved by Raleigh, but the unit has one question and they refuse to sign off on the schedule. This new schedule should alleviate some of those types of problems.
Helen Wykle asked if copies could be sent to legal counsel. Yes!
Hermann Trojanowski asked when the schedule would be published. Once the format is decided we should have a full draft to Ed by the end of August. This draft could be available to the records managers at the next meeting in September.
Suellyn stated that the minimum retentions and legal citations would be set through the draft and review process. Ed would have the final authority in reviewing the draft, just as he does now with our schedules. We are beginning with the administrative records and by the April 15th meeting we should be able to go through those one by one and have a draft to go to Ed at the end of that meeting. The committee will then take on another set of records and another until we have a complete schedule.
Barbara asked the records managers to let us know if they don't have time to review or comment on a section draft, that way the committee can continue their work without waiting to hear from someone.
Ed reiterated that no product will be perfect, but we should have a very usable document at the end of the process.
During the discussion of the general schedule there was brief discussion of microfilm production:
Helen Wykle asked about outsourcing the microfilming or microfiching of materials. She wanted to know about vendors and whether outsourcing could be done to other countries.
Ed stated that the Department of Cultural Resources used to microfilm records for state agencies, schools, trustees minutes, etc. There has been a drop in funds and loss of staff. Two years ago, the imaging unit stopped filming school records and they no longer film as many state agency records. They still do some archival filming. They have a set of standards available on the web that we should use when contracting for microfilm services. There is also a list of vendors available, though the DCR cannot recommend any one vendor over another. He encouraged us to review microfilming contracts carefully, make sure the film is okay and to get certification from the vendor. He advised us against using off-shore vendors as contracts might not be upheld if there were problems.
Madeleine said that there has been discussion of not allowing state agencies to outsource. She also said that in the past she had been quoted the price of $1 per frame of microfilm produced. She's not sure what the current price might be.
Janis said that UNC CH was quoted a price of $.08 per image for the personnel records.
Suellyn will be sending out a list of topics that have been suggested for meetings in the past and asking for volunteers to lead discussions or give presentations at the next meeting.
Meeting adjourned.
