Yet another example of the problems faced by Librarians, Archivists and Records Managers…only get us in when the problem is a MAJOR problem.

How long before organisations will begin to manage their paper based records is a question no-one seems able to answer. And will only answer when they can’t hide from the problem anymore

Records coordinator faces enormous task | newarkadvocate.com | The Newark Advocate

New hire must figure out what county has in storage

By AMY HOLLON • Advocate Reporter • November 21, 2008

NEWARK — Because almost every government agency is required to keep records, everything from court documents to tax records to 100-year-old deeds fill the attic of the Licking County Courthouse, cells of the old jail and the basement of the county administration building.
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The records are scattered, and the entirety of the contents isn’t clear.

Moreover, some of the documents must be kept permanently, but others can be destroyed after a particular period of time. Thus, many documents cluttering space simply might be trash.

For more than 20 years, the county administration has hoped to build a records center to centralize all the documents and form an efficient process for dealing with them.

Recently, the Licking County commissioners moved forward with the long-awaited organization by hiring their first Records Center coordinator, Katy Klettlinger.

All three commissioners admit, however, Klettlinger faces a tall order. They began working with Klettlinger on a game plan Thursday.

“Obviously, we have to identify what we have first,” Commissioner Doug Smith said.

Commissioner Mark Van Buren agreed.

“I think what you are going to find is most of them need to be destroyed,” he said.

Eventually, the commissioners hope to build a records center either from scratch or by rehabilitating a vacant building, but first each record needs to be cleaned, organized, documented or destroyed.

The Mormon church already made copies of hundreds of records in the 1960s and 1970s, microfilming genealogical records, but it is unclear whether the negatives will be obtainable.

Because of the quantity of records, Klettlinger will serve in an advisory capacity, but each department head under the county administration will be responsible for finding the staff to sort his or her department’s records.