This week I sat through 48 hours of Records Management Staging and Archiving Storage Training. The government requires all agencies to keep records for a certain period of time based on subject matter. Some records are only kept a few months, whereas other records are kept up to 56 years. After sitting through this training I have to wonder where in the world are all these records going too? Just in our office alone I see hundreds of thousands of documents created for many court cases. Times that number by the number of offices throughout the country and it is extremely mind boggling. I envision large buildings spread out throughout the country filled from first floor to top floor with boxes. One of the reasons for such an organized staging activity is so that if an organization needs to recall the item from storage it can be done quickly and efficiently. In my prior job with the government, I sent a request to recall a file from staging and it took six months to get it back.
Theresa
Just a thought, but I used to work for a Pitney Bowes imaging department, and we would scan these mass amount of documents you wonder about from the boxes, and store the info on disk. I am aware there are warehouses, and they are stored for that certain amount of time you are referring to, but I'm assuming since the imaging technology, that they are shredded and recycled after a few years.
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