Carolyn,
I would echo Gary's comment about an abandoned content policy. We call this situation "unmanaged records" and it has a series in our retention schedule. If these records are on floppies you can bet they are fairly old. If you had to guess what records they contain, isn't it likely by they are past retention anyway according to your records retention policy? Our policy is we try to identify the most recent date of the abandoned records. If it's more than 10 years old - it's gone. If not we classify it as unmanaged records, identify it as well and possible and run the clock out. That rarely happens since they are almost always over 10 years old. The other comment I read talked of this likely being backup material. That sounds reasonable too. No one has missed these records in 10-15 years so it's not likely they have any value.

We also incorporated a good faith statement into our records SOPs. Part of it reads -"We will maintain our electronic records as well as possible with the understanding there are significant technological challenges to their longevity and availability." In other words, when it comes to electronic media sometimes"&%it happens". I would say destroy the floppies, document what has occurred and why, and move on.

Rob Seibolt, CRM
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Manager-Records and Library Services
http://www.mriglobal.org


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