Greetings,

In keeping with list protocol, my introduction: I've been a  
university archivist for several decades. And I am one of the third  
generation of Archives staff here to have done a sort of guerilla  
records management, informally advising university departments about  
disposing of records not of interest to the archives. As a lurker I  
have benefitted from the generosity of this list's subscribers in  
sharing their wisdom and experiences. So I'm creeping out to ask two  
questions.

A little background: In 2005/06 we conducted a pilot project to  
formally develop records disposition schedules. Five departments  
participated, each designating a records liaison. We inventoried  
almost 1500 linear feet of paper and 2.6 terabytes of digital  
documents. We established a records disposition committee with  
participation from our General Counsel, ITS, Audit, Controller,  
University Historian, and Archives. We developed schedules for about  
20 general series. In my, admittedly biased, opinion we proved the  
feasibility of such a program here at an affordable cost and  
developed scalable procedures. For reasons best not described in a  
public forum, we were unable then to move to an ongoing program.  
Recently interest in such a program has been awakened in the  
university's higher echelons.

Finally, the questions. What is a reasonable goal for compliance with  
disposition schedules? For example, within 3 years of general  
schedules being published (assuming a reasonably effective education  
and awareness program) what percent of departments should have  
actually destroyed records scheduled for destruction?

I am looking for a college or university (disclaimer below) that has  
achieved its compliance goals. Feel free to suggest others if you are  
modest about your own accomplishments. I am also looking for a  
college or university that has what it believes to be an effective  
program of measuring compliance.

Disclaimer: before most universities embark on anything new they want  
to know that other similar universities have successfully  
accomplished what they plan to do; success (no matter how often the  
strategies have proven successful) in government or for-profit or  
even other types of non-profits tends to be discounted because "we're  
different."

Many thanks for whatever thoughts anyone would care to share.

Jill

Jill Tatem
University Archivist
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106-7229
http://library.case.edu/ksl/archives/
voice: 216-368-4106
fax: 216-368-0482
email: [log in to unmask]
visitors: 20 University West, 11000 Cedar Avenue

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