Records management is the systematic and administrative control of records throughout their life cycle to ensure efficiency and economy in their creation, use, handling, control, maintenance, and disposition. Applying records management in your office creates a more efficient and less cluttered workspace, provides legal protection in the event of litigation, and helps the university document its function and history.
All university employees are responsible for the management and retention of their records according to approved schedules.
Records management staff can assist your office with active records maintenance, creating records retention schedules, confidential destruction, archival transfer, and records retrieval of documents already in the archives. For more information, contact Brad Casselberry, University Records Officer, at bcasselb@uwsp.edu or 715-346-3234.
The Universities of Wisconsin Records Management website defines records schedules as “uniform guidelines for retention and disposition of records common to a business function.” Each records schedule applies to a specific records series and is assigned a unique Records Disposition Authority number. The records schedule includes a description of the common types of records that are included in the series.
Each records schedule also has Retention Event, Retention Period, and Disposition information. These fields describe how the records should be managed. The Retention Event and Retention Period fields explain when disposition can occur, and the Disposition field describes how the records should be disposed. For example, some records series should be transferred to the Archives when they meet their retention date, while others can be destroyed by their office of origin.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point follows the approved records schedules from the Universities of Wisconsin and the State of Wisconsin Public Records Board.
Before destroying your office’s inactive records, contact the Archives at archives@uwsp.edu to determine if the records are scheduled for transfer to the Archives. Archives staff are happy to meet with you to determine which records should be transferred and which can be destroyed, and they can also help pack records into boxes and move them to the Archives.