Organizations are expected to keep records that reflect how the organization operates.

How long records are kept is based on compliance with external statutory, regulatory, and legal requirements; internal legal, fiscal, and administrative organizational needs; and standards of practice (both mandatory and voluntary) and identifiable community expectations.

These guidelines provide minimum recommended standards for the retention of certain records. How organizations implement those is based on two interrelated decisions. The first is the continued usefulness of the records to the organization matched against the cost of maintenance, and the second is the risks associated with the maintenance or destruction of those records.

The Ethical Component of Retention

Organizations must manage their records in a manner that enables them to demonstrate that the organization is conducting business with honesty and integrity, consistent with the public interest and their own. They also need to maintain and preserve records in case they are needed as evidence in government investigations, litigation, audits, or other legal proceedings. They also must fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations in letter, spirit, and good faith.

The expectations in the United States, for example, are that organizations manage their records to ensure they are complete, true and accurate, accessible, legible, retained as required, and fully usable. Organizations and their records managers have ethical requirements, and ethical behavior is expected. There are exceptions, but legal compliance is the norm, and organizations and records managers are expected to keep good records.

Assessing Needs

Organizations can destroy records that should be kept based on a misunderstanding of the potential value of the records. Records managers may be the “pitchers” instead of archival “keepers,” but pitching does not equate to evasion. Moreover, conditions change, and public and employee ideas of what makes a complete record may evolve, requiring an organization to rethink its retention strategy.

Retention and disposal take place on two levels. First, there is the disposal of records relating to an activity that is not perceived to be needed to provide a complete, accurate, and true accounting of that activity.

The second level is that of documentation for the activity itself. For example, we all know what documents we need to retain to support our income tax filings. We also are aware that we need to keep our records for seven years. That is the statute of limitations on when the IRS can audit people. People can keep their records longer if they wish, based on other perceived needs (e.g., historical), but seven is the minimum that is considered prudent.

Archival Appraisal Concerns in Scheduling

There are two types of archivists: corporate and collecting. Corporate archivists are employed by an organization to preserve, maintain, and exploit its records for the good of the organization. The collecting archivist collects the records of other individuals and organizations to provide historical, cultural, scientific, and other resources for others to use.

The appraisal decisions of the corporate archivist may be aligned with the retention decisions of the records manager, while the collecting archivist will go beyond the usual retention periods. The assumption is that many of the records that are important for the short-term management of operations will be valuable for the longer-term understanding of how the organization operates and how it might evolve in the future.

The role of the corporate archivist in appraisal may be more to ensure that the records are complete enough to allow for later exploitation of questions like why initiatives succeeded or failed or why leaders were more successful than others. The corporate archivist may have even more in common with the corporate knowledge management (KM) expert. Like the archivist, the KM expert wants to know how and why not for historical purposes but to recreate the success or avoid the failure in as close to real-time as possible. The archivist and the KM expert are interested in what the records contain. Records managers may be interested more in what than how or why. While the records manager will retain records of the activity, they may not include the documents crucial to the interests of the archivist or knowledge manager.

There are also differences in the second level retention decisions: what activities deserve retention.

The focus of both the corporate records manager and archivist is inward. They look to the external world to help understand their organization, not vice versa. On the other hand, the collecting archivist has a broader interest: documenting some aspect of a locality, industry, or cultural phenomenon of which the organization is a part. Records relating to community activities, advertising, dealings with other businesses, and responses to the community may not have had much interest for the records manager or even corporate archivist. However, they may be crucial to the collecting archivist who wants to document the organization’s role in the community and the life of the organization itself.

The different information perspectives offered by records managers, archivists, knowledge management experts, and other affiliated fields provide a broad spectrum to hone records retention decisions and disposition.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog.

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Read Related Posts

Advocacy Strategies That Win Archival Funding

Archives often find themselves competing for limited resources within larger institutions. Universities prioritize teaching and research, nonprofits focus on programs and services, and corporations channel funds toward revenue-generating initiatives.

Budgeting Basics for Sustainable Archives

With shrinking resources and increasing demands, archivists cannot afford to view budgeting as an afterthought. A carefully developed budget is a strategic tool that connects an archives’ mission to its daily operations. It demonstrates accountability, supports advocacy efforts, and provides a framework for decision-making.

Strategic Planning for Sustainable Archives

Archives often operate in environments defined by scarcity of space, staff, time, and funding. In these conditions, every decision carries weight. Without a plan, archives risk spreading their resources too thin, responding only to immediate crises, and missing opportunities for growth and impact. Strategic planning serves as a lifeline, providing archivists with a structured approach to prioritize, allocate resources, and communicate the value of their work to stakeholders.

Resilient Archival Practices

Archivists have long recognized patterns of limited funding that shape their institutions, yet they have consistently responded with creativity, commitment, and innovation. Even when resources are scarce, archives continue to find ways to build and maintain essential infrastructure and strengthen public engagement. Each challenge underscores the importance of archivists’ labor and provides an opportunity to advocate for the central role archives play in their communities.

The Importance of Highlighting the Labor of Archivists

Archives safeguard treasures, including objects like the founding documents of a nation and photographs of defining cultural moments. These holdings inspire a sense of connection to the past, and at the heart of that work are archivists whose expertise brings these collections to life.

The Power of Shared Archival Infrastructure and Consortia Models

No archives is an island. Especially in resource-constrained environments, collaboration through shared infrastructure provides a lifeline. Consortia models turn scarcity into opportunity by spreading costs and expertise across multiple archives. By pooling resources, institutions achieve more than they could alone.

5 Scalable Best Practices for Small or Resource-Constrained Archives

Well-resourced institutions have developed archival best practices, including comprehensive finding aids, climate-controlled storage, and digital preservation systems. For small or resource-constrained archives, these standards can feel out of reach. The danger is that the profession’s ideals may discourage institutions from taking action, leaving records vulnerable. The solution lies in paring down practices and procedures without abandoning principles.

How to Strengthen Your Archives with Limited Resources

Many archives exist within environments of chronic underfunding. Community archives, small historical societies, or lone arrangers may work with little more than donated materials, a handful of volunteers, and minimal budgets.

However, these institutions remain vital, safeguarding the histories of communities often absent from mainstream narratives. Scarcity shapes their reality, yet it can still allow meaningful work.

Reclaiming the Value of Archivists in the Digital Age

Humanity produces more digital content than at any other point in history. Every click, message, and post contributes to an expanding universe of data that represents the cultural memory of our time. At the center of this transformation stand archivists, the professionals uniquely trained to ensure that memories survive in the future. However, even as the scale of the challenge grows, their voices risk being sidelined in public conversations about digital preservation.

Slow Archiving: 6 Ways for Archivists to Engage Mindfully

In recent years, the concept of “slow librarianship” has emerged as a thoughtful response to the accelerating pace and pressures placed upon library professionals. Drawing inspiration from the broader slow movement, it emphasizes care, reflection, ethics, and people-centered work over speed and efficiency.

The Rise of Gig and Contract Work in Archives

The archival profession is characterized by dedication to public memory, cultural preservation, and service. However, beneath this noble mission lies a troubling reality: the increasing reliance on gig and contract labor.

The Power of Oral Histories and Embodied Memory in Archives

Written documents have long occupied a privileged position in archives as the most authoritative memory source. However, this excludes vast repositories of knowledge that reside outside the written word, especially within Indigenous communities, where memory is often preserved and transmitted through oral traditions, performance, storytelling, ceremony, and embodied practices.

Rethinking Archival Description Through Decolonial Lenses

Archival description is often treated as a neutral or technical task: summarizing contents, assigning subject headings, and organizing metadata for retrieval. However, description is actually far from neutral. It shapes how users interpret records, which narratives are centered, and whose voices are made visible or erased.

Honoring Cultural Protocols in Archival Practice

As the archival profession reckons with the legacies of colonialism, more institutions and practitioners are turning toward Indigenous and decolonial approaches that reframe traditional archival practice. Central to this shift is recognizing cultural protocols and community-defined rules governing how knowledge is created, shared, accessed, and preserved. Cultural protocols are foundational to ethical, respectful, and reciprocal relationships between archives and Indigenous communities.

Decolonial Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge

In recent decades, Indigenous communities and archivists have challenged the dominant frameworks that have long shaped archival practice. Traditionally, Western archival models have prioritized state authority, institutional control, and the presumption of neutrality. These models often fail to reflect Indigenous worldviews, community needs, or the rights of Indigenous peoples over their records and heritage.

The Ethical Use of Born-Digital Materials in Archives

As archival practice shifts to meet the challenges of the digital age, the ethical use of born-digital materials has become one of the most pressing concerns for archivists. These materials—emails, websites, text messages, digital photographs, spreadsheets, social media posts, and more—are created and stored digitally from their inception.

Agents of Deterioration and Preservation Strategies

The fundamental principles of archival preservation focus on the agents of deterioration, preventive conservation, and essential preservation strategies applied in archival settings.

Tax-Deductible Treasures: The “Difficult Art” of Monetary Appraisal for Archives

The monetary appraisal of archives and manuscripts is a critical yet underexplored intersection of library science and financial valuation. This article addresses the persistent knowledge gap between archival assessment and fiscal valuation and provides an overview of the monetary appraisal process in the United States. It focuses on concluding the fair market value (FMV) of noncash charitable contributions, a process governed by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations and the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP). By documenting practices and terminology, the article serves as a resource for archivists navigating the complexities of donor relations and institutional stewardship. It advocates for increased fiscal literacy within the archival profession, suggesting that an integrated understanding of market dynamics and stewardship costs is essential for the care and financial substantiation of collections.

Best Practices for Archival Storage: Materials and Planning Essentials

Proper archival storage is one of the most critical aspects of archival preservation. In addition to housing collections in a dedicated archival storage room, using suitable storage materials and enclosures helps protect archival collections from environmental damage, physical wear, and chemical deterioration.

Balancing Collection- and Item-Level Information in Archival Description

One of the core challenges archivists face is determining the appropriate description level for materials in their collections. From broad collection-level overviews to granular item-level details, descriptive hierarchies play a crucial role in conveying the context and structure of archival materials.

Best Practices in Archival Description

Description is a cornerstone of archival practice, providing the means for users and archivists to understand, access, and interpret materials.

Practical Strategies for Arranging Mixed-Media Archives

Mixed-media archives, which contain physical and digital records, present unique challenges for archival arrangement. These collections require archivists to develop strategies that address the different needs of physical and digital materials while maintaining the collection’s coherence and accessibility.

Arranging Digital Archives: 4 Unique Challenges for Modern Archivists

Digital records have introduced new challenges to traditional archival arrangement practices. While the principles of original order and provenance remain relevant, the nature of digital materials requires archivists to adapt these principles to new formats and technologies.

Original Order and Provenance in Archival Arrangement

Archival arrangement organizes and structures archival materials to ensure efficient management, access, and preservation.

Redaction in Archives

Redaction in archival work—obscuring or removing sensitive information from records—has become a central concern in contemporary archival ethics. As archives increasingly acquire born-digital records and digitize historical collections for online access, archivists must grapple with data privacy, access, transparency, and potential harm.

Data Privacy in Archives

Archives have traditionally focused on preserving historical records, ensuring access, and maintaining the integrity of collections. However, in the digital age, the moral responsibilities of archivists have grown more complex.

Ethical Approaches to Surveillance in Archives

Archives have long been viewed as bastions of memory, preservation, and historical accountability. However, archivists must confront ethical questions in an era of digital surveillance, data harvesting, and global information flows.

Designing for Emotional Engagement in Archives

As archival institutions evolve from custodians of information to facilitators of memory and meaning-making, emotional engagement has become a vital, though often overlooked, dimension of archival design.

Designing Accessible Archives: Rethinking the Reading Room Experience

Archival reading rooms have long been the centerpiece of public access to collections. They are where researchers engage with historical documents, where discovery becomes tangible, and where the institutional identity of an archives is most visibly embodied.

How to Develop User-Centered Archival Discovery Tools with Design Thinking

Archival discovery tools, such as catalogs, finding aids, search interfaces, and digital repositories, are often the first point of contact between users and collections. These tools serve as maps and compasses, guiding users through vast and often complex holdings.