Hi Kathryn,



I usually recommend that our departments keep on hand ONLY those records they need for current work. We have been re-configuring our offices recently and have also run into this problem.



Many people fear that, once records are sent to off-site storage, they will never be able to get them back. Resolving this legitimate fear entails dealing with two factors.



The first factor is you MUST create an accurate, complete and consistent inventory on the records. This inventory must be accessible, at a minimum, to your records management department. If you cannot provide this, the users' fear is likely to be realised.



The second factor is how quickly your NORMAL retrieval time might be for any records requested by your users ("Normal" as opposed to various types of RUSH or EMERGENCY retrieval requests, where the costs escalate very rapidly). The longer the normal retrieval time, the more records you need to keep on site.



Here at NYCEDC, we have three "regular" deliveries a week:  Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We tell our users that retrieval requests placed with the off-site storage vendor before 3:00 PM of the day immediately-preceding a scheduled delivery day will get fulfilled on that scheduled delivery day. So if one of our users requests a retrieval before 3:00 PM tomorrow (Thursday), she/he will get the records this Friday. Essentially ALL users here at NYCEDC are satisfied with that turnaround time. In the five and a half years I've been here, we've had ONE emergency retrieval request.



Some people think that it's cheaper to digitise paper records than it is to store them. That's almost NEVER the case (with some exceptions, for example if you have a client relationship that requires immediate access while the client is online or on the phone, e.g., life insurance, or the like).



With respect to shredding, if by that you mean a comparison of shredding vs. recycling, I think the cost of determining the risk of a privacy or security breach on a document-by-document basis is likely to exceed, by far, the difference between the cost of recycling and the cost of shredding. It's likely to be safer and, in the long run, cheaper to shred. BUT be sure to select a shredding vendor that meets the NAID AAA Certification (http://www.naidonline.org/nitl/en/cert/history-purpose.html) requirements for ALL of the records you want destroyed. The 2009 ARMA publication "Contracted Destruction for Records and Information Media" may be helpful here.



If, on the other hand, by "shredding" you mean shredding records after they are digitised, that's perfectly legal under Federal law and under many State laws (but you need to check to be sure, especially when your law firm is established in several different states). HOWEVER, you better make sure you have a well-defined process not only for digitizing but also for quality control of the digitisation (images and index). I would not care to be testifying in court on this issue absent such procedures.



Another perspective on this issue is how long you need to keep the records:  for those which are PERMANENT or have very long retention periods (25 years+), it is prudent to keep the paper version, as opposed to having to deal with digital preservation (which, in this context, refers to maintaining access to the digital records for multiple decades).



Hope this helps!



Fred

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Frederic J. Grevin

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212-312-3903 (w)



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