2. Goals of RM 201: Beyond The Basics
Best practices
Structuring & organizing your files
Naming conventions for your paper & electronic files
Managing active & inactive records
Managing copies
4. A well designed filing system:
• Must make filling less difficult, tedious, and unattractive
• Must offer quick and easy filing and retrieval information
• Must ensure integrity and continuity of record keeping
despite changes in office personnel
• Must have uniform practices
• Must allow for easy identification and purging of inactive
records according to RM policies
• Should provide clear and simple filing categories
• Should be expandable and flexible enough to meet
everyone’s needs
12. Naming conventions for your paper &
electronic records
• A good format for date designations is YYYYMMDD or YYMMDD. This format makes
sure all of your files stay in chronological order, even over the span of many years.
• Try not to make file names too long, since long file names do not work well with all
types of software.
• Special characters such as ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) ` ; < > ? , [ ] { } ' " and | should be
avoided.
• When using a sequential numbering system, using leading zeros for clarity and to
make sure files sort in sequential order. For example, use "001, 002, ...010, 011 ...
100, 101, etc." instead of "1, 2, ...10, 11 ... 100, 101, etc."
• Do not use spaces. Some software will not recognize file names with spaces, and file
names with spaces must be enclosed in quotes when using the command line. Other
options include:
– Underscores, e.g. file_name.xxx
– Dashes, e.g. file-name.xxx
– No separation, e.g. filename.xxx
– Camel case, where the first letter of each section of text is capitalized, e.g.
FileName.xxx
13. Managing copies
Sort out your "Office of Record"
records and focus on those records
first. This means any records for
which your office creates or
maintains the official record
copy. Those records are your top
priority. For other records, you may
need to keep a reference copy for a
short time.
Reference and/or convenience
copies do not need to come through
Records Management for permission
to destroy.
Editorial Guidelines on Bullets:
1. Vertical lists are best introduced by a grammatically complete sentence followed by a colon. No periods
are required at the end of entries unless at least one entry is a complete sentence, in which case a period
is necessary at the end of each entry.
Example: A university can be judged by three measures:
· The quality of its students
· The quality of it faculty
· The quality of its infrastructure
2. If a list completes the sentence that introduces it, items begin with lowercase letters, commas or semicolons
(if individual items contain commas) are used to separate each item, and the last item ends with a period.
Note that the introductory clause does not end with a colon.
Example: A university can be judged by
· the quality of its students,
· the quality of its faculty,
· the quality of its infrastructure.
3. Avoid mixing sentence and nonsentence items in a bulleted list.
Individual records are like puzzle pieces. When that puzzle is assembled, people can easily see the complete pictures, which is really important to our work- records tell us things and helps us do our job. Having standard filing systems and structures ensures that all records, regardless of their media, are properly and consistently house, identified, and maintained so that they can be efficiently and effectively retrieved.
Just to stress records document the functions and service of an institution, and they support an employee’s performance of their assigned duties. It is all of our responsibilities to maintain records.
As a unit, office, or department you will need to develop a filing system for maintaining records, and need to determine how the system will be used.
A good filing system is developed through a basic file plan. Planning is important because it established direction and control, ensures that everyone involved has a common understanding of the purpose and goals and provides guidelines.
Think of file plans as a roadmap to how your unit or department managed their records
While managing your records is responsibility we all have, one or more people, depending on the size of your unit or department needs to figure out take the lead. It is essential to give some thought to how the records need to be organized and structured, rather than allowing it to develop in an ad-hoc and uncontrolled way.
Centralized filing places all records series in one central location in an office. It is most useful when the majority of individuals within an office require access to a majority of the files. The electronic equivalent to centralized filing would be a shared directory like an I drive.
In a centralized file system:
there is greater control over the files
uniformity and consistency is easier to maintain
all important information is located in a central location
all information regarding a specific subject is located in a central location
the need for duplicate files is eliminated
storage of records requires less equipment and space
Decentralized filing physically locates record series in different places within an office. It is most useful when only one individual requires access to a specific record series. The electronic equivalent would be an individual’s access to their PC. In this case, it works only if the creator of the files is the only user of the files.
In a decentralized file system:
there is less chance of folders being misfiled into the wrong record series
limited access to a series leads to greater security and confidentiality
Remember, filing systems should reflect the function and organization of an office
How you organize and name your files will have a big impact on your ability to find those files later and to understand what they contain. You should be consistent and descriptive in naming and organizing files so that it is obvious where to find specific data and what the files contain.
Editorial Guidelines on Bullets:
1. Vertical lists are best introduced by a grammatically complete sentence followed by a colon. No periods
are required at the end of entries unless at least one entry is a complete sentence, in which case a period
is necessary at the end of each entry.
Example: A university can be judged by three measures:
· The quality of its students
· The quality of it faculty
· The quality of its infrastructure
2. If a list completes the sentence that introduces it, items begin with lowercase letters, commas or semicolons
(if individual items contain commas) are used to separate each item, and the last item ends with a period.
Note that the introductory clause does not end with a colon.
Example: A university can be judged by
· the quality of its students,
· the quality of its faculty,
· the quality of its infrastructure.
3. Avoid mixing sentence and nonsentence items in a bulleted list.
