Seeking Records Nirvana? Here We Are Now, Let's Retain This

One Year Anniversary of the Scan Center

It is the one year anniversary of the creation of the Creative Communications Scan Center, which provides secure, on-campus scanning of UW and UW Medicine documents. Ridding your office of paper has many benefits: people can access the information remotely, it’s backed up, and you can probably do something better with the physical room that the paper is taking up (we’ve seen people create everything from student lounges to areas for workstations with their newfound open space). That being said, scanning isn’t for everyone (perhaps you don’t really access those documents often, or the documents are very close to reaching the end of their retention period).

Here’s a resource to help you determine if it’s right for you!

Continued Focus on Digital Accessibility 

A hot topic lately has been digital accessibility since the Department of Justice (DOJ) published a new rule on digital accessibility under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This rule requires the University’s web content, including academic course content, to be accessible starting on April 24, 2026. If you have older web content that is not accessible, what do you do? Since our retention schedules are format neutral, it is the function or content of any record that determines the retention not just the fact that it is a webpage. Like any other type of record, the retention depends on what it is.

We laid out the options for dealing with older web content in this web resource about Managing Web Content. Check it out and get your office in compliance ahead of that April deadline!

General Schedule Updates 

Effective Immediately

Student & Curriculum: Education Events, Forums, and Activities was updated.

For the series Disciplinary Cases relating to students, the language was updated and clarified to make it easier for departments to follow. 

We are in the process updating the Student and Curriculum Records section of our General Records Retention Schedule. Previously, advisor’s records had their own retention schedule, but now we have combined all student-facing records together into one convenient place.

Let us know by emailing recmgt@uw.edu if there are student records you deal with that are missing on there. Or if there are any series on there that you happen to know need to be updated. So far, what we are mostly finding in that section that processes are becoming more centralized, and in many cases the departments no longer receive their own copies like they did in the past.

We aim to make our retention schedules as up-to-date and easy to use as possible. Let us know if you have any suggestions for keywords that could be added for better searching purposes.

Coming Soon

By next month, our office will have a new resource on our website focused on the use of SharePoint including best practices, tips on how to best leverage the data management features of the system, and fun new ways to store your records. Stay tuned!