The thread on annotations has been interesting. I'm somewhat shocked,
however, at the lack of consideration by some on this list for one of
the key aspects of setting retention periods. For many, if not most of
us (and particularly those of us in the private sector), the records
manager is also the de facto archivist of the organization. Our
archival brethren have often knocked us for being gung-ho records
destroyers, and sadly, I'm afraid that is true for many folks.

I was always taught to appraise records based upon the legal,
administrative, fiscal / audit, and HISTORICAL value of the record.
Granted, very few records ever have the historical value, but there are
truly times where we must look at that aspect of the record.

While the Haldemann annotation may be an extreme example (as this was a
historical figure commenting about another historical figure), that
annotation was very telling. While it did not direct anyone to do
anything (often a primary consideration of whether or not an annotation
makes the document a new record), it is a telling comment. Once upon a
time, I worked for the Archdiocese of Chicago. The late John Cardinal
Cody was a very controlling manager of the Archdiocese. That is evident
in the fact that most correspondence to the Archdiocese crossed his
desk and he would annotate the document and give direction to whatever
subordinate needed to handle the issue. Without those annotations, it
would be difficult to make the statement that Cardinal Cody was a
controlling manager.

I think that in every organization there is a level of leadership where
the records manager really must look at the historical value of the
documents -- and look at how people work. In many organizations, the
people at the top do not work from PCs or email. They still dictate
letters and oftentime mark up letters by hand.

Our responsibility cannot solely be to abide by the legal minimum
retention periods and work to dispose of records as quickly as possible
without consideration to the corporate memory of the organization.
There are times where we have to appraise the historical value of a
record and set the retention period accordingly. Anotehr example: I
also worked for a large financial services company. When the records
program started, we had numerous boxes of miscellaneous records that
had been stashed in the "dead storage" room. Over time, we whittled
down the pile of records and found the correct record series and
retention for most of the material. One of the boxes that I came across
had the project files for a failed venture in Japan. Now normally, that
sort of project matter might have a fairly short retention period,
assuming that there are no fiscal or audit issues in there. As I
reviewed the contents of the box, I discovered that there was also a
very considerable set of documentation of what we would call "lessons
learned". As I reviewed that material, it occured to me that this
information would be valuable in the future if the company ever wanted
to go down that path again -- at bare minimum, it would provide some
guidance for what they had done, what worked, what didn't, and what
they would want to consider doing differently. That has value to an
organization -- assuming that someone would think to look for such
things. But we all undoubtedly have had those sorts of wild goose
chases in our records center -- some muckety-muck calls down and is
looking for some obscure bit of information. It is really important.
But they have no idea how it was filed. Sometimes, we perform miracles;
sometimes not.

One of the promises of knowledge management was the ability to "push"
these sorts of gems of information out there where people could find
it. I'm not sure that has happened as well as it was promised.

At the end of the day, then, I'd like to suggest that we all have a
more open mind about the potential for some records to have historical
value. That doesn't mean keep everything scrap of paper that the CEO
has blown his nose on.

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