As government records, there is a greater likelihood that your records
generally have more items with "historical" value than what those of us in
the corporate world see. You may also have direct guidance from your State
Archives about what types of records should be designated for archival
review or retained as permanent. If there aren't specific rules from your
State Archives on how local government records are to be maintained, I am
reasonably certain that they should have some guidance or assistance for
you in appraising the records. As others have indicated, you may have a
county historical society that can help. The challenge is weighing the cost
of maintaining what might be seen as "obsolete" records against the
historical value of the same records. This is where you may find an
opportunity to move those records offsite or to provide an additional
service to the county by maintaining historically significant records in an
archive that you manage. The departments can maintain the active records,
while you retain the historical records. The challenge there, obviously, is
funding, but the strategy has often been a winning one for historical
archives. Margaret Cross Norton, the first Director of the Illinois State
Archives was able to create the Archives collection by enticing state
agencies to let her store the "old records" in the new State Archives
building by "giving" them vault space (which most forgot about over time).

Patrick Cunningham, CISM, FAI

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