Every organization has a history; ideally, institutions should organize and preserve their records for the future. Written records are often the only source of information about an institution’s early intentions and activities, and these documents provide institutional knowledge about the organization’s establishment, by whom, and what programs and activities it created.

Record retention is either date-driven or event-driven.

Managing an organization’s current records is records management, and maintaining records of enduring value is archives management.

Most people in leadership positions focus on the present and the future. When conversation turns to an organization’s history, it is usually in connection with milestones such as anniversaries or leadership transitions.

Email remains the poster child for electronic records (mis)management, and with good reason. Many sources cite that 75% of all office work flows through email, and more recent figures put the figure at over 80%.

Data warehousing is a method via which structured records are available to support business functions. Data warehousing arises out of an organization’s need for dependable, consolidated, unique, and integrated reporting and analysis of its data at different levels of aggregation.

Organizations are expected to keep records that reflect how the organization operates.

In the lifecycle of electronic records, inactive storage offers several challenges. One of the strengths of archives and records management in the paper world was that records managers controlled inactive storage.

To effectively create and capture records, archivists need to decide on several issues at the organizational or business process level. Of the documentation being created, what needs to be captured as a record?

Digital preservation is a rich area of archival investigation, with several approaches available to archivists.