Annual Report 2011: Records Management

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As a con­tin­u­a­tion of our series on our 2011 Annual Report, please see a descrip­tion of our work in Records Management:

In Jan­u­ary 2011, we hired Anne Marie Phillips as the first Uni­ver­sity Records Man­ager, kick­ing off the devel­op­ment of a for­mal­ized records man­age­ment pro­gram for the uni­ver­sity. Anne Marie spent the first three months meet­ing with admin­is­tra­tive and aca­d­e­mic depart­ment staff to deter­mine what were the most urgent records needs and to pro­vide pre­lim­i­nary instruc­tion to those who wanted to move ahead and imple­ment rec­om­mended fil­ing sys­tem and records reten­tion prac­tices. These inter­views and instruc­tional ses­sions led Anne Marie to iden­tify finan­cial records as the first group of records to address at a university-wide level, as every depart­men­tal man­ager has finan­cial account­ing and report­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties and the atten­dant records issues. To make progress in this area, Anne Marie, Dan Linke, and Dan San­ta­maria met with the Vice Pres­i­dent for Finance and Trea­surer, Car­olyn Ainslie, and her direct reports to dis­cuss the project, and the result has been that Anne Marie has been work­ing closely with finance and trea­sury staff to clar­ify cen­tral and depart­men­tal needs for finan­cial records and cre­at­ing reten­tion and dis­po­si­tion poli­cies for these records.
Anne Marie has con­tin­ued to work with depart­men­tal staff across the uni­ver­sity address­ing the man­age­ment of both finan­cial and non-financial records, con­duct­ing indi­vid­ual and group train­ing in the areas of file sys­tem devel­op­ment and the appli­ca­tion of reten­tion and dis­po­si­tion sched­ules. She has also begun cre­at­ing infra­struc­ture for the records man­age­ment pro­gram includ­ing cre­at­ing records sched­ules, estab­lish­ing meth­ods of com­mu­ni­cat­ing records man­age­ment infor­ma­tion, and build­ing part­ner­ships with uni­ver­sity staff with value to add to the records man­age­ment pro­gram devel­op­ment process.
Dur­ing the first six months of the records man­age­ment pro­gram, Anne Marie:
  • Met with thirty aca­d­e­mic and admin­is­tra­tive depart­ments to gather infor­ma­tion and pro­vide advice and training;
  • Worked with Finance and Trea­sury and Audit and Com­pli­ance to iden­tify and address the high­est pri­or­ity finan­cial records of the university;
  • Cre­ated a records man­age­ment blog, Just for the Records, to dis­sem­i­nate records man­age­ment infor­ma­tion to the Prince­ton community;
  • Deliv­ered a spe­cial­ized records man­age­ment pre­sen­ta­tion to the staff of the Teacher Prepa­ra­tion Program;
  • Rep­re­sented the records man­age­ment pro­gram at a sus­tain­abil­ity open house for the res­i­dents of 701 Carnegie, dis­cussing the pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal effects of good records management;
  • Devel­oped a rela­tion­ship with the PU Stor­age Facil­ity staff and iden­ti­fied how the records man­age­ment pro­gram will mesh with the records cen­ter func­tion of the PUSF;
  • Worked with Facil­i­ties staff to address records issues raised in the process of a major reor­ga­ni­za­tion in their work­flow; and
  • In con­junc­tion with the Linke and San­ta­maria, began plan­ning for an elec­tronic records man­age­ment program.
Stay tuned for fur­ther dis­cus­sion of our 2011 work involv­ing col­lec­tion devel­op­ment, exhi­bi­tions, and more.