ARCHIVAL
A very small percentage of records will be given an archival designation because they have continuing value to the institution. Most records that are considered archival will receive this designation because they have historical value, but some records will receive this designation because they have continuing fiscal or legal value.
ADMINISTRATIVE COPY
An unofficial copy of a record that is maintained near the user for ease of access and reference.
CONTINUING VALUE
Continuing Value is the usefulness or significance of records based on the information they contain that justifies their ongoing preservation.
DISPOSITION
Disposition is the actions taken to fulfill the requirements outlined in retention schedules to retain, destroy or transfer records. Note that disposal is not synonymous with destruction, though destruction may be one disposal option.
ELECTRONIC RECORD
Any record that is created, received, maintained and/or stored on on-premise servers and/or in College-managed cloud services, regardless of the application used to create that record. Examples of electronic records include, but are not limited to, electronic mail, word processing documents, spreadsheets, and databases.
FILE PLAN
A classification scheme that organizes records according to business function, across a department or division. It includes retention schedules and disposition methods, document descriptions, archival value of records, indexing keywords.
INACTIVE RECORD
Once a record has passed its useful stage it is considered to be inactive. The inactive period will vary depending on the nature of the record, but generally a record is inactive if it has not been referenced in more than two years.
OFFICIAL RECORD
The record that is retained in accordance with the approved retention schedule for legal, administrative, fiscal, and/or historical purposes.
PERSONAL FILES
Personal files (also called personal papers) are documentary materials belonging to an individual that are not used to conduct College business.
RECORD
Information created, received and maintained as evidence, and as an asset by the College; or its faculty or staff, in pursuit of legal obligations or in the transaction of business. This information, regardless of physical format or characteristic, must be maintained to meet the administrative, fiscal, legal or historical needs of the College.
RECORDS CUSTODIAN
A single individual who best understands the record systems of their office and is able to make decisions regarding the retention and disposition of their records.
RECORDS LIFE CYCLE
The Records Lifecycle is a concept that draws an analogy between the life of a biological organism, which is born, lives and dies, and that of a record, which is created, is used for as long as it is needed for business purposes and is then disposed of either by destruction or by transfer to archival custody.
RETENTION
Retention is the function of preserving and maintaining records for continuing use. Records may be retained in the system of origin, or transferred to a separate repository such as an offline system or records center.
RETENTION PERIOD
A retention period is the length of time that records should be retained in an office or records center before they are transferred to archival custody or destroyed. The retention periods chosen for different records should be based on legislative or regulatory requirements as well as on administrative and operational requirements.
RETENTION SCHEDULE
A Retention Schedule is a document that identifies the records of an organization or administrative unit and specifies which records should be preserved as archives and which can be destroyed after a certain period of time. The retention and disposal schedule provides ongoing authorization for the transfer of records from offices to records centers, along with the destruction of obsolete records and the preservation of archival materials.
R.O.T.
ROT is the acronym for records that are redundant, obsolete, or trivial. It is information scattered throughout the enterprise that has no value that legally can and should be destroyed. Examples include duplicates, copies, drafts, out of date material, legacy records, etc.
SERIES
The level of arrangement of records that brings together documents or files relating to the same function or activity or having a common form or some other relationship arising from their creation, receipt or use.
STRUCTURED DATA
Structured data refers to data that is organized and formatted in a specific way to make it easily readable and understandable by both humans and machines. This is typically achieved through the use of a well-defined schema or data model, which provides a structure for the data. It is typically tabular with rows and columns that clearly define data attributes. Examples of structured data include names, addresses, credit card numbers, telephone numbers, star ratings from customers, bank information, etc.
UNSTRUCTURED DATA
Unstructured data–typically quantitative–refers to data that does not have an identifiable structure or organization as it does not conform to a predefined data model. It can't be easily stored in a traditional column-row database or spreadsheet. Unstructured data includes content such as emails, images, videos, audio files, social media posts, PDFs, and much more.