Why do people keep everything? There are lots of reasons,but the one that I hear most often is:“I might need it again someday.”
On days when I’m frantically switching between two hats (archivist and records manager),that answer both makes sense and makes me tired. Archivists love to keep things. Well,some things,anyway–hopefully those that fit the scope of the collection and contribute to a more complete historical record. Records managers,on the other hand,love to throw things away–in general,records that no longer have informational or historical value in accordance with retention schedules and institutional needs. These are definite oversimplifications to be sure,but when explaining my job function to a harried departmental secretary (as I was recently),I’ve found that it helps to be concise. In fact,when I’m meeting with departments to discuss their records,I almost always get a question along the lings of “why would you want to go into this field anyway?”
Picture the attic,or perhaps the hallway or storage room in your workplace. Over time it has transformed from being a file room to holding other discarded things–banners,an old typewriter,old cube walls,coffee cups from two presidential terms ago,an adding machine,and other junk. Piled high with the detrius of daily life,the room is a place where old office stuff goes to die,and that includes old files. Old files that may document the progression and daily life of your office–and which may be of high interest to your neighborhood archivist. Or,possibly,old files that have confidential information and should have been destroyed long ago,according to your institutional record schedule. In either situation,the files are taking up space–lots of it–and people say we “should”keep it,but cannot name the reason why.
In almost all cases,people hold onto things way longer than they should. Sometimes this is a benefit to the archives,because there are hidden gems squirreled away by overzealous secretaries within departmental files,and we discover them years or even decades after the boxes have been accessioned. From a records management and legal standpoint,this is a problem because records slated by destruction according to records schedules and state laws are sitting around in virtually every department on probably every campus in the US. It becomes an even more interesting dance when student records are added to the mix (as they almost inevitably are) because FERPA guidelines restrict the access and use of almost anything academically related to specific students.