ACCESS : "right, opportunity, means of finding, using, or retrieving information " (definition from the ISO 15489 Standard on Records management).
ACTIVE RECORDS : those records which are used on a day-to-day basis to support the normal course of business. Also known as current records.
ADMINISTRATIVE VALUE : the value of a record in terms of its contribution to business operations and activities.
APPRAISAL : the act of assigning value to records in order to establish retention periods and the final disposition of records.
ARCHIVES : the non-current records of an organisation preserved because of their continuing value. Also used to designate a place where permanent records are preserved.
BEST PRACTICE : methods and processes of working which conform to currently available national and international standards.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY : the capacity to continue or rapidly resume operations in an emergency or following a disaster. In particular, it implies vital records have been protected.
COMPLIANCE STANDARD : by law, many industry bodies and trade associations require products (e.g. motorcycle helmets) to conform with a British standard or a European directive before they can be offered for sale in the UK or EU. The international records management standard is not a compliance standard, but standardises international best practice in records management and gives guidelines on how to achieve best practice.
CONVENIENCE COPIES : duplicates of a record (whether paper or electronic) that are prepared for use as reference copies. Also known as use copies or work copies.
CURRENT RECORDS : records necessary to conduct the current business of an office and therefore generally maintained in office space. Also known as active records.
CREATION : the first phase of the life cycle of a record, which is the point at which the phases of its life should be determined based on the series to which the record belongs.
DESTRUCTION : "process of eliminating or deleting records, beyond any possible reconstruction" (definition from the ISO 15489 Standard on Records management). In records management, disposal of records usually leads to destruction. Methods of destroying records include, for paper-based records, burning, pulping and shredding or discarding with other waste materials. Electronic records are deleted by removing the index record to them, but can only be completely eliminated by destroying the medium on which the file is stored.
DISASTER : an unexpected event, such as fire or flood, inflicting widespread destruction and having long-term adverse effects on an organisation's business operations.
DISASTER PLANNING AND RECOVERY : preparation to prevent disasters and, in the event of a disaster, to ensure that business resumes as soon as possible and that full recovery occurs with minimum delay.
DISPOSAL : the actions taken regarding records after their retention periods expire and consisting usually of destruction, but alternatively of transfer to archives if the records are of continuing value.
DISPOSAL AUTHORITY : a document providing authorisation for the disposal of records having no further value.
DISPOSITION : the final phase of the life cycle of a record series, resulting in either destruction or archival retention.
DOCUMENT : recorded information regardless of physical form or characteristics. Whereas all records are documents, not all documents qualify to be called records, although the terms are sometimes mistakenly used as if interchangeable.
DUPLICATE : a copy of a paper document, microform, or magnetic tape or disk. See also convenience copy.
ELECTRONIC MAIL or E-MAIL : the process of sending and receiving messages in electronic form via remote computer terminals; and the messages themselves.
ELECTRONIC RECORDKEEPING SYSTEM : an electronic system in which records are collected, organised, and categorised to facilitate their preservation, retrieval, use, and disposition.
ELECTRONIC RECORD : information recorded in a form that only a computer can read, i.e. in digital form.
EVIDENTIAL VALUE : the value of records in terms of proof as to the origins of an organisation and how it operates; the usefulness of records in documenting the structure, functions, and activities of an organisation.
FISCAL VALUE : the value of a record in terms of documenting its involvement with financial and tax matters.
FORMAT : the shape, size, style, and general make-up of a record. In electronic records, the arrangement of data for computer input or output, such as the number and size of data fields in a logical record or the spacing and letter size used in a document.
FUNCTION : the characteristic action or specific purpose of an organisation or person.
FUNCTIONAL CLASSIFICATION : the division of records into categories and sub-categories to reflect the functions, activities, and transactions carried out by the organisation accumulating the records.
HARD COPY : recorded information copied from a computer onto paper or some other durable surface, such as microfilm. As opposed to a temporary image on a display screen derived from electronic information on a computer disk.
HARDWARE : a computer system's physical equipment, including the central processing unit (CPU), control unit, memory, input/output devices, and storage devices.
HIERARCHICAL SYSTEM : a classification system in which records are arranged under primary (first-level) categories and then, as necessary, under secondary (second-level) and further subdivisions.
HISTORICAL RECORDS : records having historical value and therefore earmarked for permanent retention.
HISTORICAL VALUE : the value of a record in terms of its potential interest to historians, or to document aspects of the organisation's history.
INACTIVE RECORDS : those records which are no longer required on a day-to-day basis, but which need to be retained for legal, fiscal or archival reasons. Also known as non-current records.
INDEX : a separate collection of cards, extra copies of documents, cross-reference sheets, or other forms arranged differently from the related record series in order to make it easier to locate relevant documents. A manual listing or automated listing arranged differently from a related record series or system to speed retrieval of relevant files.
INFORMATION : facts or data communicated or received; or processed data.
INFORMATION COPY : a non-record copy sent to individuals or offices interested in, but not acting on, a matter.
INFORMATIONAL VALUE : the value of a record in terms of the factual information its contains about an organisation or a person or an event; the usefulness of records in documenting the persons, places, things, or matters dealt with by an organisation, in contrast to documenting the organisation's structure, functions, and activities.
INVENTORY : a survey of an organisation's records and non-record materials that is conducted primarily to develop records schedules and also to identify various records management problems, such as improper applications of recordkeeping technology; also the results of such a survey.
LEGAL VALUE : the value of a record in terms of showing compliance with laws and regulations; the usefulness of records in documenting legally enforceable rights or obligations.
LIFE CYCLE OF RECORDS : the management concept that records pass through three stages: creation, maintenance and use, and disposition; it compares records to biological organisms which are born, live, age and then either die or remain in suspended animation as archives.
MAINTENANCE AND USE: the second phase of the life cycle when records are in frequent use and when key importance is attached to information storage and retrieval.
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM (MIS) : an organisation’s procedures for accumulating, processing, storing, and retrieving valuable information.
MEDIUM : the physical form of recorded information. This includes paper, film, disk, magnetic tape, and other materials on which information can be recorded.
METADATA : data about the data, i.e. "data describing context, content and structure of records and their management through time" (definition from the ISO 15489 Standard on Records management).
MIGRATION : in electronic records, the process or result of moving files from one computer system to another, while maintaining the records' authenticity, integrity, reliability and usability, often in order to maintain accessibility as the set of hardware or software on which they were created goes out of date.
NON-CURRENT RECORDS : records no longer required to conduct an organisation's business and therefore ready for final disposition.
OFFICIAL COPY HOLDER : the named person or section or department whose responsibility it is to ensure the master copy of the record is protected and managed. Sometimes called custodian.
OFF-SITE STORAGE : a facility other than an organisation's normal place of business where records, particularly non-current records and vital records, are stored for protection.
OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION (OCR) : a method of entering text or data into computer software (often word-processing software) by using an optical scanning device to read the contents of documents.
OPTICAL DISK (OD) : a random-access disk tracked by optical laser beams and used for mass storage and retrieval of digitised text and graphics. Includes WORM disks (write once read many), CD-ROM (compact disk - read only memory).
PERMANENT RECORDS : records appraised as having sufficient historical or other value to warrant continued preservation beyond the time they are needed for administrative, legal, or fiscal purposes. Sometimes called archival records or historical records.
PRESERVATION : measures taken to maintain, repair, restore, and/or generally protect records in appropriate facilities.
PRIMARY VALUE : the usefulness of a record in terms of the reason why a record was created; this value is either administrative, fiscal or legal or a combination of these.
PROPRIETARY INFORMATION : information owned by a business organisation.
PUBLIC RECORDS : records accumulated by Government agencies or public bodies; or records open to public inspection by law (e.g. Freedom of Information Act) or custom.
RECORD SERIES : "a group of identical and related records that are normally used and filed as a unit and that permit evaluation as a unit for retention scheduling purposes" (Robek, Brown & Maedke.
A records series consists of documents or file units arranged according to a filing system or kept together because they relate to a particular subject or function or result from the same activity. In addition to paper documents, records series may also contain records in other non-paper formats, including electronic, microform, audio or video recordings, photographs, motion pictures, maps, charts, aerial photographs, or remote sensing imagery.
RECORDED INFORMATION : information placed on a medium, such as paper, computer disk, or microform, to be available for later retrieval and use.
RECORDKEEPING : the act or process of creating and maintaining records. Assumes the need for their proper disposition.
RECORDKEEPING SYSTEM : a manual system or automated system in which records are collected, organised, and categorised to facilitate their preservation, retrieval, use, and disposition.
RECORDS : "information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organisation or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business" (definition from the ISO 15489 Standard on Records management).
"...those documents, in whatever medium, received or created by an organisation in the course of its business, and retained by that organisation as evidence of its activities or because of the information contained. Records ... are products of the activities of which they form a part. Indeed records have no existence other than as a product of business activity, without which they have no context or meaning." Emmerson.
Includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine-readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, created or received by an organisation and preserved as evidence of the organisation, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the institution or because of the informational value of data in them.
RECORDS AUDIT : a survey to collect information about the record series kept in an organisation, their location, frequency of use and the facilities in which they are stored.
RECORDS CENTRE : a place where records are stored at low cost pending their disposal or transfer, and from where they may be made available for use. Also known as depository, repository or archive.
RECORDS MANAGEMENT : "field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records" (definition from the ISO 15489 Standard on Records management).
"the systematic control, organisation, access to and protection of an organisation's information, whether it be on tape, disk, paper or film, from its creation, through its use, to its permanent retention or legal destruction" (Records Management Society of Great Britain).
RECORDS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM : a planned, co-ordinated set of policies, procedures, and activities needed to manage an institution's recorded information. Encompasses the creation, maintenance and use, and disposition of records, regardless of media. Essential elements include issuing up-to-date program directives, properly training those responsible for implementation, publicising the program, and carefully evaluating the results to ensure adequacy, effectiveness, and efficiency.
RETENTION SCHEDULE : a list of the record series in an organisation with requirements for how long they should be kept in the various stages of their life and, in some cases, the justification for the periods specified. Also known as records disposition schedule, records control schedule, records retention schedule, records retention and disposition schedule, or schedule.
RETENTION PERIOD : the length of time that records are to be kept.
RISK MANAGEMENT : in records management risk can be defined as the chances of exposure to adverse consequences of future disasters, such as fire and flood. Managing risk involves doing a risk analysis, assessing likelihood, impact and cost, and putting in place a plan to avoid or prevent the negative outcome or at least to minimise its impact. If the analysis shows the cost of prevention is greater than the likely impact, then the risk can be accepted. Within risk management there is a key role for protection of vital records.
SCANNING : in electronic records, the process of converting paper-based information (text and/or graphics) to an image, or bit-mapped representation.
SECONDARY VALUE : the value of a record in terms of its future use either as historical evidence or information.
SOFTWARE : the programs and programme applications used to operate a computer.
TRACKING : "creating, capturing and maintaining information about the movement and use of records " (definition from the ISO 15489 Standard on Records management).
TRANSFER : moving records from one location to another, especially from office space to agency storage facilities or archives.
VITAL RECORDS : those records that are essential to the continued operation of an organisation after a disaster, and those essential to protect the legal and financial rights of the organisation and of individuals concerned.
WORKFLOW : the flow of information through a business process, usually now used in relation to automated systems which route transaction records through a business process.