University-wide Recordkeeping Best Practices

Princeton’s Records Management program provides training, consultations, and services to assist colleagues in upholding the University-wide Records Management Principles. Employed in conjunction with approved Records Retention Schedules, recordkeeping best practices not only bolster compliance and limit unnecessary legal discovery, but also enhance information security across formats, increase efficiency in day-to-day workflows, and ensure that permanent records containing institutional history and operational knowledge remain accessible.

The below methods can help individual Princeton community members securely destroy paper-based and digital “ROT” (redundant, obsolete, and transitory records), while also maintaining records that need to be kept for legal compliance, internal reference, or historical research.

Organization and Assessment

  • Aim to organize digital and paper-based files at least once a year, at the beginning or the end of the academic, calendar, and/or fiscal year. This will set a regular recordkeeping schedule that prevents documents from building up on site. Material generated at a high volume may need to be assessed and stored or destroyed quarterly.
  • Identify what needs to be saved and what can be destroyed. If your office has an approved Records Retention Schedule, you can use it to locate each record series (type of record) your office generates, the record's retention period (how long to keep it), and its final disposition (what to do with it), as well as the Office of Record (office responsible for the maintenance of the record series). Please see Records Management’s Records Retention Schedule Implementation Guide. If your office does not have an approved Records Retention Schedule, or if you are a staff member in an academic department, you can refer to the Administrative and Common Records Retention Schedule, Records Management’s recordkeeping best practices for academic departments, and/or the following recommendations:
    • Pinpoint which files are records (items with informational, administrative, fiscal, legal, or historical value) versus non-records (items with limited or no informational or administrative value). Non-records include physical and digital material like personal notes, meeting request responses, mass emails, and junk mail.
    • Use the Records Retention Schedules for other administrative offices to confirm that your department's copies of a record are duplicates used for reference. Reference copies should be destroyed as soon as they are no longer needed, and before the retention period for the official record expires. Additionally, copies of records with restricted information always should be shared using a service like SecureSend.
    • Identify the final draft of a record and delete or securely shred any previous versions no longer needed for reference.
    • Store physical records in a centrally accessible area, with security measures for records with sensitive and confidential information. Consult the University's Information Security Policy for guidance about identifying and appropriately handling records at all classification levels.
    • Electronic records should be saved in stable formats (e.g., PDF, TIFF); named according to a standardized file convention; uploaded to a shared digital environment, with permissions adjusted according to the records' classification(s); and organized in folders according to work function or project, record series, and date, so that all files in the same folder or subfolder can be deleted simultaneously. Only maintain final versions of records on a shared platform; drafts on local and shared drives can be deleted. For more details, please see Records Management’s brief guidelines for managing digital records.

Records Destruction

  • Set aside paper-based non-records and expired records for destruction. Non-records or “expired” records past their retention periods can be either recycled or shredded, according to their classification. Expired records with confidential information like PII (personal identifying information) should be securely shredded on site by Princeton’s records destruction partner, Polar Shredding. If you are unsure about the destruction method for your paper-based records, err on the side of caution and shred them securely. Check your building to see if it already has a Polar Shredding shred bin, which is ideal for small destruction projects.
    • Make sure that any expired records ready for destruction are not responsive to pending or ongoing litigation. If you believe that an expired record may have a legal hold, contact the Office of General Counsel to verify its status.
    • Non-records and records that have short retentions (six months or less), or a retention of “active,” can be separated out during day-to-day workflows so that they are easily destroyed. A record remains active as long as it is consulted and used at least 2-3 times a year.
  • Destroy electronic records according to the same retention requirements as physical records. Retention periods are format neutral and apply to records in paper, digital, and audiovisual formats. Electronic non-records and expired records should be deleted beyond recovery, such as emptying a Recycling Bin or Deleted Items folder.
    • If a record series has components in multiple formats, be sure to shred, delete, and otherwise destroy all constituent parts of the record series at the same time.
    • For more information about deleting obsolete digital records, please see the Electronic Records Destruction Guide.

Records Storage and Transfer to the University Archives

  • Temporary (non-permanent) physical records with longer retentions can be sent to offsite storage at 755 Alexander when they are no longer in active use, and then retrieved on demand whenever needed. Please contact Records Management for more information about completing a box inventory and coordinating a pickup for storage. When preparing paper-based records for storage, please use standard Bankers boxes and group records together by record series and the date range in which they were created, or in which another retention trigger began the records' inactive period. A record is “inactive” when it no longer has administrative or informational value. For instance, Special Collections Call Slips become inactive when the borrowed items are reshelved and the requests are completed. Boxes of Call Slips heading to storage for the rest of their retention period should contain requests completed within the same date range, to ensure that all the records in the box can be securely destroyed on the assigned destruction date.
    • Please do not store records with different retention periods together. This results in a mixed retention and prevents records with shorter retentions from being destroyed in a timely manner.
  • Permanent records should be transferred to the University Archives as soon as they become inactive. This does not include records with a retention of “permanent within Office of Record,” which are kept on site as sources of operational knowledge. Please see Special Collections' guide to transferring records to the University Archives. If you have any questions about whether your records are archival, please contact Records Management or use the Special Collections Ask Us page.