Hello everyone.  I haven't been a subscriber to this listserv since I left my
position as Records Manager for Revlon in 1999.  After a stint consulting and
then as an outsourced records manager for a law firm in NYC, I found my way
back home to Connecticut at a privately held pharmaceutical company.  With my
commute changed from 2 hrs to 30 minutes my quality of life is certainly
better.  Hopefully my life expectancy has increased too.

Anyway, I do have a question, and it deals with establishing a record series
for "backup tapes" on a company's records retention schedule.  Over the years
I developed a belief that backup tapes (in general and not linked to any
specific content) should not be categorized as a record series because they
are objects of a process (system recovery).  When a retention period is
assigned, it is done to support that process rather than based on the content
of the information.  I also think that the whole process should be controlled
by the IS/IT group responsible for the process.  That includes contracting
with a vendor to pick-up, store, rotate, deliver and destroy the tapes as
required.  

I have been in several discussions lately where this philosophy is being
called into question.  That backup tapes, even though assigned a short
retention period, should appear on the records retention schedule, and that
the corporate records management group should take responsibility for sending
them to storage and retrieving and rotating them.  The main driver is that RM
group has staff and IT doesn't.  This is new to me and I would like to find
out what other companies are doing.  What is the best practice today?  Do the
revisions to the FRCP change things?  I have tried to find some instructions
/ best practices to give to IT for managing this process but haven't been
lucky.   

I will be happy to take this discussion offline if necessary.  I am happy to
know that this listserv is still going strong after all these years!


Carolyn A. Mariani
Sr. Associate Director, Information Management
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
900 Ridgebury Road
Ridgefield, CT 06877
203-798-4424
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