Storing Records

Offsite storage

Records & Archives can arrange for the offsite storage of your records with our approved storage provider.

Records are appraised before transfer; to determine the period of time for which they must be stored, and to register them in the University recordkeeping system, RAMS, so they remain discoverable when required.

Records & Archives can also administer their retrieval when necessary (and subsequent return to storage) and for their eventual destruction when no longer required.

 

Scanning records

As an alternative to storing your records offsite, you may decide to have them digitised and captured to an appropriate business system such as RAMS.

Scanning records has no effect on the obligations for their creation, capture and management. However, it may be possible to destroy the source paper records as part of this process, assuming certain requirements are met.

There are recommended minimum technical specifications for scanning to ensure that the digitisation process results in authentic, reliable and usable records.

Please contact us to arrange for the digitisation of your records by our approved third party provider, and to ensure these requirements are correctly addressed.

 

How to destroy records that have been scanned

There are specific provisions for converting hardcopy records to digital format, including when the source (hardcopy) records can be destroyed.

These provisions require that before the destruction of the source paper records is approved you must ensure that:

  • authentic, complete and accessible copies of the records are made
  • the scanned records have been appraised, and captured to an appropriate business system
  • a quality control exercise has been conducted and documented to ensure the digital records are true copies of the source paper records

It should also be noted that, whilst they are not commonly encountered, there are some types of records excluded from these provisions for which scanning may not present the best solution.
 

 

Have a question?

Contact the Records Team on 02 9385 2861 or email records@unsw.edu.au / Contact the Archives Team on 02 9385 2906 or email archives@unsw.edu.au

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