Purpose of Retention Schedules in Archives and Records Management
Why should I Create a Retention Schedule? This is the first in a series of blogs about various topics in archives and records management. In this vlog I will be addressing the matter of having a Retention Schedule, a document that is absolutely critical to the efficient management of records in organizations. For proper records management to be practiced in an organization it is compulsory for the Records Manager to see to the creation of a Records Retention schedule as soon as possible. Lets go to a quick definition before we go any further. Simply put, a records retention schedule is a document that "identifies records maintained by all or part of an organization and specifies the period of time that records are to be kept" (Saffady pp 37). Most organizations have a tendency to store every possible record without realizing that they need not save every receipt, every invoice, every conceivable document and this often continues until there is an overwhelming crush do...