Records Management in the Administration of College and University Archives

Abstract

WHAT role should records management play in the administration of college and university archives? To answer this question we must first understand just what this activity is and its relation to archives administration. It evolved during the years of the Great Depression and the Second World War as a product of the effort to control the rapidly accelerating accumulation of papers in the Federal Government agencies. The first phase in the evolution of records management took place at the National Archives as an outgrowth of the effort to improve the quality of accessioned As the Archives began to take in the noncurrent records of Government agencies, it had the unhappy experience of inheriting the results of poor filing practices of the offices of origin. In all too many cases these noncurrent records consisted of poorly arranged papers infiltrated with many extra copies, printed and processed nonrecord material, and record material of ephemeral value. The process of weeding out the disposable material and rearranging the records of enduring value at the National Archives was time consuming. The remedy lay in the archivist's extending his concern to the offices of origin and, in collaboration with them, improving the management of their To bring this about the National Archives inaugurated its Administration Program, relying on the legal sanction of powers granted to the Archivist of the United States in the National Archives Act of 1934. The strongest impact of the program was felt in the defense agencies, to which archivists from the National Archives were transferred to administer the program. The Records Administration Program of the National Archives remained in effect for some 9 years, during which many of the current records in the agencies of origin were surveyed, appraised, and evaluated, and the results were recorded in a document that, after a period of experimentation, of trial and error, finally came to be known as a for the retention and disposal of records. The development of a schedule for an agency was a major accomplishment in that it was