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Records Management: Tear It Up Day
The University of Virgina went public with their efforts to comply with the state of Virginia Public Records act. The school declared June 27th as Records Management Day on campus and encouraged campus departments to ‘Tear it Up’. By law the school needs to retain financial and administrative records, student examinations and purchase orders for various retention periods, but once those periods have expired, the records should be scheduled for destruction.
The university found a unique way to bring attention to the dreary topic of Records Management that many would much rather overlook. They turned a task that many of the school adminstrators dreaded into an event. Prizes and refreshments were available. There were gift certificates from local merchants and prizes went to the departments that contributed the most. The English, psychology and psychiatric medicine departments were the winners.
Shredding machines were set up at strategic points on campus and a shredder truck capabile of handling up to 13,000 pounds was available, and anything that didn’t fit in that would be handled by University of Virginia Recycling. It turns out that actually 22,000 pounds of old records were collected and destroyed.
Assistance was available for anyone needing help moving heavy boxes of records. And at one point a bucket brigade was set up to pass boxes of records from one person to the next until finally being loaded onto the truck.
“The sense of team building and esprit de corps in the staff is very good and this is a very worthwhile group effort,” said Donna L. Hearn, the Department of Psychology’s assistant chairwoman. “We want to be compliant and adhere to the regulations on records. This enables us to use our precious space in a better fashion.”
Roughly 10 of the total 40 school departments participated in the event.
The event apparently is not unusual. The Wall Street Journal reports that many local governments, corporations and small businesses are working with mobile shredding companies hosting free get-togethers for people to recycle their records.
