Webpages, like all records, need to be retained based on their function or content, according to a legally approved retention schedule. If your office has web content that no longer needs to be shared online, there are reasons that the materials might need to be downloaded and retained. For example, it might still be within its legal retention period, or staff might be actively referencing the record for a legitimate business or legal reason. The UW has a responsibility to retain that content until the retention period has been met, but that does not mean that units must maintain that record on the web or in a published state. Units need to analyze content to determine:
- Is content already duplicated elsewhere?
- Determine the appropriate retention period associated with the content
- Download Content locally
- Delete the web content
Duplicated Elsewhere: Remember that you do not need to keep duplicates, so if the materials are saved elsewhere, you do not need to download and retain the pages. An example of this is if you publish on a webpage a list of applicants who have been awarded a scholarship, but you also have this same information saved separately on a departmental shared drive, then you can delete the webpage once it is obsolete or no longer needed.
Also if you think certain aspects of a webpage might be helpful for future, but not necessarily the entirety of it, you could create a summary document or a procedure document highlighting the parts you want to reference in the future. This could be helpful in the case of events or promotional materials. You could make a document that summarizes what you learned from the past work of planning events or drafting communications to help the office in the future, and then delete the webpages themselves.
Determine Retention: If the content is not already duplicated in another location, and the webpage is the only source of that material, units should analyze the content to determine if there is still remaining retention value. Visit our common retention examples related to web content to see exhaustive examples of the type of content typically found on UW webpages. If the content is past its legal retention period, units can forward the contents to the UW Archives or delete the page entirely, based on the disposition method mentioned on the UW records retention schedule.
Download Content Locally, Delete Web Content: If there is remaining retention value on the content, units are encouraged to download webpage content and retain it locally. In doing so, the published website version now becomes a duplicate, therefore it can be deleted. The unit should then retain the downloaded copy until its legal and business value have been fulfilled. If content is archival, units should contact the UW Archives before deleting their web content. The UW Archives may prefer to crawl the webpage rather than receiving local copies of HTML or PDF documents.