A records survey is a useful tool for understanding the existing records of an organization. The survey creates an inventory that reveals existing record groups, locations, conditions, and quantities.
Knowledge of the collections enables the first step in organizing records. In addition, it serves as an opportunity to discover and correct current recordkeeping problems and to anticipate and avoid future ones.
The survey facilitates efficient recordkeeping practices. Records become easier to understand through surveying, which simplifies tasks of creating a records retention schedule and implementing an archives program. Retention schedules specify which records should be retained, for how long, and which to discard or preserve in the archives. The survey also determines the volume of records, assesses their contents, contexts, and date ranges, and identifies materials that require special handling, such as rare materials, unusual formats, or damaged items.
The survey is most effective when archivists, records managers, or people with some record management or institutional knowledge conduct interviews of key employees who use the records. A skilled surveyor can anticipate the record types usually created or maintained by a particular function and ask leading questions to trigger information about those records.
Departmental Analysis
The analysis of a department leads to understanding its place in the institution. A department’s functions are revealed beyond where the department may appear on the organization chart. From this insight, it is possible to identify the unique records that are created or held by the department.
Before conducting the records survey, consider the following questions:
What are the department’s functions?
How is the department organized? Are there divisions or sections?
What programs or projects does the department manage?
What committees do the department have?
What is unique about the department and its functions?
What is most important to document about the department?
Records Survey Questions
The following questions should be considered for each records series. A record series is a grouping or assortment of records maintained together because they form a unit based on their functions or relationships with one another. Consider the following topics:
Department: Which unit within the organization created these records?
Contact: Who is familiar with the records as questions arise? What is their contact information?
Record series: What is a brief, descriptive title for each group of records?
Content: What subjects, events, or people are represented?
Arrangement: How are the records organized? Is there an order or none at all?
Volume: How many materials are there? Use consistent measurements across all records series, such as linear feet, boxes, or filing drawers, when possible.
Format: What formats does this collection hold? Will specialized storage or handling be necessary?
Condition: What condition are the records in? Are their preservation problems?
Location: Where are the materials housed? Are they in the office or stored elsewhere?
Inclusive dates: What is the date range? What is the bulk of the records?
Active use: Are the records still needed in their department? Are they actively used, such as being consulted more than once a month? Are they semi-active? Are they inactive?
Values: Are these materials historical? Do they reveal important historical information about the organization’s founding, values, activities, and goals? Are they vital? Are they crucial to the organization’s existence? Should they be kept permanently after their period of active use?
Next Steps
The record survey results are used to identify specific records series for preservation. The survey is also consulted to determine the retention periods for non-permanent records and to assist a department in deciding how long to keep permanent records in the department before sending them to the archives.
As high-level assessment tools, record surveys support a framework for managing records. They identify the various records categories created, processed, or received by the organization or a department within a larger organization. The purpose of the survey is to determine records categories users create, receive, process, or maintain in their operational or project-based work. With the knowledge gained from the survey in mind, organizations can make intelligent decisions about their records and preserve their institutional memory and wisdom.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fundamental principles of archival preservation focus on the agents of deterioration, preventive conservation, and essential preservation strategies applied in archival settings.
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.
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.
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.
Description is a cornerstone of archival practice, providing the means for users and archivists to understand, access, and interpret materials.
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.
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.
Archival arrangement organizes and structures archival materials to ensure efficient management, access, and preservation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Design thinking has become a widely adopted approach in fields ranging from technology to education, prized for emphasizing empathy, experimentation, and iterative problem-solving. For archives, traditionally shaped around internal workflows and professional conventions, design thinking presents an opportunity to reimagine outreach and engagement strategies from users’ perspectives.
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.