The amendment to Law Enforcement Records (Standard 9) on the Municipal schedule is available and may be downloaded at the following url: http://www.ncdcr.gov/Portals/26/PDF/schedules/amendments/municipal_amendment_2015and2013.pdf Once your municipality has approved the amendment, please remember to send a copy of your signature page to the Government Records Section at the address or fax number below, or email a copy to a…
The correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, the journals of Lewis and Clark, and the Manhattan Project notebook are all examples of records with historical value. They’re the stuff that history textbooks are filled with, and without question, these records significantly inform our understanding of U.S. history. How do we determine if records are historical, though, when…
Recently, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released a bulletin to provide guidance on managing email for federal agencies. Tasked with keeping the nation’s records, NARA offers those of us at the State and Local levels a timely reminder of our collective email-keeping responsibilities and a few helpful tips to tackle the job. Government…
At the end of 2014, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled on a public records access case which hinged on the proper custodian of the records and the party responsible for access under the public records law. Frayda Bluestein discusses this ruling and its ramifications in her post in Coates’ Canons “Custodians of Public…
Happy New Year everyone! And with the New Year, many of us are about to experience a prolonged deep freeze. During last year’s coldest weather, a number of government offices in the mountain counties experienced plumbing issues. Before the frigid temps move in, double-check to make sure that you don’t have records stored in locations…
Charter schools are a relatively recent development in the history of American education. North Carolina first passed a law authorizing charter schools in 1996, and removed the cap on the total number of charters permitted in the state in 2011. What makes charter schools unique is that, while they continue to receive public funding as a traditional public school,…
The County Records collection of the State Archives of North Carolina includes wills and estate files, tax scrolls, Superior Court judgment and minute dockets, and many more record series. In a previous blog post, I described one way to do a catalog search for archived county records. This post explains how to perform a call…
When analysts write records retention and disposition schedules for North Carolina state and local governments, we write records series descriptions to help you categorize your records and apply the right disposition instructions. Records series descriptions include the records’ business function and, often, a list of document types found in the records series. With most records…
The State Archives of North Carolina provides microfilming of the minutes of major decision-making boards and commissions in state agencies and local governments. Once the minutes are filmed, we will store the “silver halide” original in our security vault. When we make a copy of the microfilm for state agencies or local governments to use in…
The amendments to the Employee Eligibility Records on the local schedules are now available for download. You can find them at http://www.ncdcr.gov/archives/ForGovernment/RetentionSchedules/LocalSchedules.aspx. The schedules affected are: ABC Boards County Board of Elections County Management County Tax Administration County Veterans Services DMH/DD/SAS Local Management Entity Local Health Departments Public Hospitals Public Libraries Public Transportation Systems and…
State agency employees who commonly work with the Government Records Section, including Chief Records Officers, will find this news not-so-new: we are currently in the middle of moving one of the records warehouses that commonly stores state agency records. Chief Records Officers have been notified which of their records are being directly affected by the move. …
We have written on this blog several times about scanning government records. There was a detailed explanation of how to determine whether scanning is an appropriate document management solution. There have been several overviews of scanning operations for local governments, most recently in response to the question, If our county has a public record on…
With the increasing use of audio and video recordings in matters of law enforcement, the Government Records Section of the State Archive is putting forth for your review an amendment to address the retention of these records. This amendment, which will affect both the Law Enforcement Standard of the Municipal schedule and the Program Operational Standard…
We received great public records questions from local governments this fall, and now share them for your benefit. The last post had questions regarding retention; this post focuses on questions about electronic records. My county is missing some older minute books. I’m pretty sure that the State Archives microfilmed the books. Can I obtain electronic…
We received great public records questions from local governments this fall, and now share them for your benefit. This post concerns retention; the second post will concern questions about electronic records. Our town management donated a boat to a nonprofit organization, which now has title to the boat. Do we retain the paperwork on the…
