David:
It depends on whether they are state institutions and what state they are in, since FOI laws differ from state to state and the U.S. federal FOI law only pertains to federal agencies.  Most of the state laws say that records that do not exists, do not have to be created to respond to a request.  But that usually means that the raw data must be provided, unless exempt or prohibited by law (such as PII).

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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-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Gaynon
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 11:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] Freedom of Information Question

Over the weekend I saw an article which raised what I thought was an interesting Freedom of Information question.  Apparently a textbook publisher submitted freedom of information requests to 500+ public universities asking for grade distribution by course by instructor back to 2007.  They apparently intend to set up a website where this information would be available to registered users (e.g. students) who would be provided access based on a subscription fee or perhaps advertising model.  Well, my question is this.  Universities certainly have records of grades but they may not have the data produced and distributed in the way requested.  Under this type of circumstance would the recipient of such a request be required to create records to comply with the wishes of the requestor or could they simply say sorry we do not maintain such records.

David B. Gaynon
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Huntington Beach CA, USA



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