Jesse, I don't think that retention schedules have ever been used as
finding aids. They can be, but that's never been their principle
function.

Folks, big bucket is nothing new. Its simply a variation on functional
retention scheduling, first proposed by Skupsky in the 1980's (I
believe), and I would say began entering practice before then. One of
the things I find interesting here is the vendor community. I remember
proposing essentially an application of functional retention scheduling
to email about 10 years ago (applied based on function - for example, a
simple "accounts payable" retention applied to an "accounts payable"
email account), and having various vendors decry the illegality and
inappropriateness of such an idea, as we were at that time relying on
complex taxonomies and drop boxes to classify e-records(itself, in my
opinion, a variation on Commonwealth registry practices) and attempting
to scare the **** out of everyone with horror tales of Enron et al. My
main point at the time was that such complexity simply wasn't necessary
from a retention standpoint, particularly with email. Now I see the
exact opposite - big buckets for everything, again primarily to
facilitate the functioning of certain types of records keeping
applications within certain electronic environments. I don't think this
is necessarily a bad thing, but just point out the problem with
conversations like this: we are putting the cart before the horse.

The definition of a record, the definition of a draft, when big buckets
make sense, when the risk really does exist that you may need to defend
something in court (a lot of the time that risk is extremely low to
non-existent), when various applications make sense - all of these
require a large variety of responses and tools, yet what is constant are
fundamental underlying records keeping principles (best outlined, IMHO,
by ISO 15489, but I'd love to look more into InterPARES). I've always
felt the real skill of a records manager is understanding what mix of
tools and policies to apply in a given situation, based on these core
principles.

One of the keys to that understanding? Can you read my mind? .... here
we go.... are you ready?.....

Context.

Dwight Wallis, CRM
Records Administrator
Multnomah County Fleet, Records, Electronics, Distribution and Stores
(FREDS)
1620 S.E. 190th Avenue
Portland, OR 97233
Phone: (503)988-3741
Fax: (503)988-3754
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