For years and years (and years ....), in records management "permanent" means forever.  As more and more electronic records are created, we seem to drift away from this meaning and get involved in how long can it sit on the server or "permanent" meaning any time longer than 100 years or a static repository and/or location for the record in an electronic archive.  When the retention "permanent" is given to a record, it means the record has historical value.  If the record has a more transitory value - such as 3 years or 100 years or 75 years after death - then the specific value should be used.  Once we have placed a "permanent" value on a record, we have obligated our organization to expend resources to protect and preserve that record forever.  This gets costly with special environmental storage conditions for paper, film, or magnetic media records and budgeting for and expending funding for migration activity for electronic records. 

Ginny Jones 
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI) 
Records Manager 
Information Technology Division 
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities 
Newport News, VA 
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