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For anyone who has searched desperately through piles of papers for a
misplaced document, a visit to the new Dartmouth Records Management facility is
inspiration for better organization. Calm order prevails among the long aisles
of cardboard boxes. There are about one million files in those boxes, and the
staff can locate any single one in seconds.
Records Management staff, from left: Diane Preston, Wess Jolley, and Ginger
Harrington. Not pictured is Adam Vivian. (Photo by Sarah Memmi)
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"Our charge, and it is a broad one, is to protect the records of the
institution," says Wess Jolley, College records manager.
"Institutional records need to be managed deliberately, but without a
centralized system, records retention is very haphazard. People may just throw
things away when their file cabinets are full, or move them to an attic or
basement." When this happens, vital records can be discarded or lost.
The good news is that Records Management maintains a hyper-organized
environment so that individual departments don't have to. Records Management
stores files of operational, fiscal, or legal importance on behalf of over 220
Dartmouth departments and offices. Last summer the operation moved from
Centerra Park to a new facility on Etna Road in Lebanon, N.H., which features
security and fire protection systems, climate control, a wireless barcode
scanning system (all incoming records are cataloged down to the file folder
level using a computerized system), and plenty of storage space.
Records Management is an alternative to devoting valuable on-campus space to
long-term storage. Its services are free, and Jolley stresses that it acts only
as custodian; individual departments retain ownership and control of their
documents. They can access information about their records using a Web-based
online system and request to retrieve documents, which Records Management will
hand-deliver in four to six hours—less time than it might take to find
something in a disorganized office. No records are ever destroyed without the
consent of the owner.
Currently, Records Management only stores physical files, but "The
future plan is for a digital storage infrastructure," says Jolley.
"It is a huge task that we are beginning to tackle. The problem with any
machine-readable technology is that it requires layers of hardware, software,
and storage, and if any one of them fails it doesn't work." A task force,
chaired by Jolley and Director of Academic
Computing Malcolm Brown, has been researching Dartmouth's digital archiving
needs and potential systems.
Thus far, the emergence of digital technology has only increased the flow of
paper records requiring storage. Jolley explains, "The idea was that
digital technology would replace paper, but so far it has just created more
ways for people to print documents and has increased our paper output. People
also have to print digital documents because they don't have meaningful digital
storage options."
Jolley hopes to see paper storage inventories level off as digital life
cycle management options become available. In the meantime, he wants the campus
community to know that its records are in good hands: "It's a tight ship,
you can trust us."
By SARAH MEMMI
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