Stephanie,
I used MS Access as "part" of records management, also at a mining
company. We used it to create an inventory of our archived / closed
records, so something you need to ponder is, are you working with live
/
active records that are being altered over time, or are you working
with
"in-active" files that will never change and are simply being
maintained
as reference until the end of their retention.
Access is (as Ganesh noted), excellent for creating an index of files.
However; if you're tracking versions, pulling historical copies or
ensuring chain of ownership, on "active documents", Access is not your
tool.
Best of luck,
Brad Furlow
-----Original Message-----
From: STEPHANIE THOMAS <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Using Microsoft Access for Records Management
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 17:06:24 +0000
Thanks Ganesh. You've brought up some good points for me to consider.
Stephanie
> From: "Vednere, Ganesh" <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Records Management Program <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Using Microsoft Access for Records Management
> Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2008 12:27:01 -0400
>
> Stephanie wrote "Has anyone used Access for records management
> purposes? Did it work well or did you end up switching to a package
> that is made specifically for records management?"
>
> Stephanie - the first issue that you may run into with something like
> Access is that it is more geared towards storing data in a table
format
> (rows and columns) and not necessarily for storing records and/or
> records information. While you could certainly create a catalog using
> Access to inventory records and perhaps even maintain retention
periods
> - the bigger issue is that it does not help you with the "management"
> part of records management. The Access database may well have an entry
> that says the supplier contract is stored on "C:\Contracts" folder but
> that does not mean that in six months the actual record would still be
> on that location e.g. maybe someone decided to put all contracts in a
> shared drive or on SharePoint etc. The second issue is around record
> information itself - some records are frequently superseded by newer
> versions - using an Access database may prove cumbersome to track
> version and audit trail history of who, what, why a change was made
to
> a particular record. Also using links to track records presents the
> same issue of broken links, lost documents and outdated information
in
> the future.Other issues that come to mind are how to apply retention
> policies, information security policies etc etc.
>
> I think it's great that you are planning to taking an excellent step
to
> structure and catalog records using an Access database (versus the
> current spreadsheets and indexes) but this would not be considered
> true management of records. ...If interested, may i suggest leveraging
> ARMA/AIIM websites to search for a variety of technologies that
support
> RM.
>
> Thanks
>
> Ganesh Vednere
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
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