Please allow me to complicate the discussion a bit. I didn't see in Tamara's original inquiry identification of the copy of record for the course description. Establishing retention on the basis of contract expiration is one thing, but we have had recent discussion with our Provost's Office here regarding retention of course catalog data that is resident in Peoplesoft. The driver has been the frequent requests we get from alumni who seek course descriptions for professional certification, articulation and credit transfers, or admission to advanced degree programs. We routinely receive requests for course descriptions from the 1970's and 1980's. We recently had a failure in locating a course description for a graduate seminar which was never published in the catalog.

It may be that scheduling the materials for destruction seven years after obsolescence works in terms of the once active course content, likely retained in a learning management system like Blackboard, but the copy of record that used to be maintained in paper course catalogs has other appropriate purposes that should be supported. This model gets very fuzzy when you have some but not all of the Blackboard content for a specific course being modified over time.

The discussion we're having with Provost is along the lines of exporting PDF copies of degree requirements and course description data from Peoplesoft, and the University Libraries ingesting and maintaining those records in our institutional repository. While we did some work trying to model and schedule records series in Blackboard courses back in 2004 or so, that work was never finished here...

Rob Spindler
University Archivist and Head
Archives and Special Collections
Arizona State University Libraries
Tempe AZ 85287-1006
480.965.9277
http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives 

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