Good afternoon Kelly.  It was nice to meet you at the ARMA Conference.

At my last employer (we had over 100,000 boxes in off-site storage, mostly in our HQ areas, but some 40 percent from our district/regional offices) we had a policy on using properly descriptive information when sending boxes to our storage vendor.  We used their on-line/web-based software.  We encouraged the use of the large comment field to enter folder names/case numbers, etc. for ease of retrieval.

In addition my assistant and I reviewed the information entered on a regular basis and contacted offices/persons we felt needed to edit or expand on the descriptions.  We had some 200 users of the system, and most were quick learners and were eager to make things easier on all parts.

Tod Chernikoff, CRM
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> (see PAK I even read your ADMIN Message)
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kelly_Hamilton<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
  To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 12:59 PM
  Subject: [RM] When we can't determine what's in a box


  Good morning!

  When we look in our records management software for a box that may be 
  required by legal, tax, etc., we are at the mercy of the people who typed 
  into the software what was in the box.  We have name ranges, batch number 
  ranges, and so on in the contents field.  However, when we need to search 
  for a specific name, or vendor, we often can't find it because we just 
  don't know where to look, or which boxes may be applicable.

  How are others handling this issue?  We've thought about requiring people 
  to list all the vendors contained in a box in the contents field, but that 
  could easily become overwhelming.  Same thing for a batch number 
  range...although we COULD find a specific batch, we still don't know which 
  batch goes with which vendor.

  Thanks!

  Kelly Hamilton
  Records Specialist
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