General Information Value of Records Management Services Steps in a Records Management Program

General Information

The University of Wyoming Archives and Records Management Program offers records management services to University of Wyoming offices, departments, and colleges. The University's records are information with assets that document fundamental relationships between students, staff, faculty and the State of Wyoming. Records are fundamental and essential to tasks and decisions made by these groups.

The University of Wyoming Archives is the repository of permanent records created by these entities and the papers of the University of Wyoming faculty.

^ Back to Top

Value of Records Management

A records management program is a systematic plan for creating, organizing, and using information. It ensures that information is available quickly and efficiently. It encompasses all forms of recorded information -- paper documents, computer files, diskettes, tapes and microfilm -- and provides for their routine upkeep, preservation, and disposition. 

Through records management, units within the University can:

• Help control the amount of storage and length of time records are kept
• Provide orderly and systematic destruction of records consistent with administrative, legal, fiscal, and historical requirements
• Reduce costs associated with the storage of active and inactive records
• Improve efficiency of retrieval
• Identify and preserve records with permanent value, saving UW's corporate memory
• Ensure protection of valuable records against deterioration or destruction

^ Back to Top

Services

• Advice to improve filing systems and procedures and how to protect your vital records from disaster
• Retention schedules that list your file titles, recommendations on how long you should maintain the records in your office, when you should send them to the UW Archives, or when you should destroy them
• Research about the federal and state statutes that affect the creation, maintenance, and destruction of your records
• Information about sources for filing equipment, data conversion, and archival supplies such as boxes and acid-free paper
• Training through UW Human Resources
• University records which have been arranged and described in inventories and available in the AHC catalog.

^ Back to Top

Steps in a Records Management Program

• Records Inventory (19 k):  Identifying what type of records are being create and maintained
• Records Retention:  Determining how long these records need to be kept
• Records Storage:  The AHC provides storage only for permanent records, not those with short-term value
• Retrieval of Files (26 k):  Files can be briefly returned for administrative use

^ Back to Top