Thanks, I can see that information held outside an office record keeping system might be considered evidence if it is pertinent to a matter under inquiry.  For example, in another setting, I remember Josh Steiner, a young Clinton administration Treasury Department official, got in trouble for what he had written in his diary.  And took some heat for trying to explain at a hearing around 1994 that what he wrote in his contemporaneous diary was not accurate.  

I'm mostly just interested in how document production requests are worded.  And why the issue of convenience copies seems to generate so much more debate than it did in the paper based days.  Of course, the "problem" might be me, having first worked for 14 years as an archivist and for the last 16 years as an historian, I just don't have the background in records management that most of the rest of you do!

Thanks for the response!

Maarja

>>> [log in to unmask] 3/2/2006 4:57:15 PM >>>
Maarja Krusten wrote:
I still don't see how an organization could considered responsible for
the handling of convenience copies kept by an employee at home, outside
the official recordkeeping system.

Maarja, the material you are referring to outside of the official
recordkeeping system still qualifies as evidence, which is why it is
subject to discovery. And, as such, it can also be challenged as
evidence, perhaps on the basis that it was outside the official
recordkeeping system (or whatever basis it can be challenged on, which
is beyond the scope of this non-lawyer's experience!).

Dwight Wallis, CRM
Records Administrator
Multnomah County Fleet, Records, Electronics, Distribution & Stores
(FREDS)
1620 SE 190th Avenue
Portland OR 97233
phone: (503)988-3741
fax: (503)988-3754
[log in to unmask] 

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html 
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance