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

In the lifecycle of electronic records, inactive storage offers several challenges. One of the strengths of archives and records management in the paper world was that records managers controlled inactive storage.

To effectively create and capture records, archivists need to decide on several issues at the organizational or business process level. Of the documentation being created, what needs to be captured as a record?

Digital preservation is a rich area of archival investigation, with several approaches available to archivists.

Archivists Mark Greene and Todd Daniels-Howell, who were both employed at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), focused on the role of business records within that large collecting repository, which had state government records and a responsibility to document a geographic area as well as topics.

Records managers develop retentions and approve disposals to clear unneeded records while at the same time advocating for planned preservation of those records that need to be retained for the long term.

Archivists manage information about their collections with a number of different software solutions, which may have overlapping functionalities.

Communications and outreach are an essential part of any archival program. Like politicians, archivists need to develop talking points to stay “on message.”

The ways to spread the word are varied, and archivists can be creative and have fun communicating their holdings’ value.

Many disciplines and fields in the humanities rely on the intensive use of primary sources and collecting, preserving, and facilitating access to those sources.

With the advent of technology, researchers have realigned the methods required in the digital environment for managing primary sources and research and pedagogy based on them.