Basic Definitions and Procedures

Public records:

LAUC records are open to access by the public based on University of California system practice.

Currency:

Current records are those records necessary for conducting the current business of LAUC and therefore must be readily available to members of the organization.

Non-current records are those no longer required for the conduct of current business and can either be transferred to an archive for use by public researchers or destroyed.

For the purpose of these guidelines, current records are defined as those five years old or less. Non-current records are those older than five years. Generally, current records will be passed along from one chair to the next. Non-current records will be transferred from the chair to either the statewide or appropriate divisional archive or destroyed.

Records deemed essential for the continued functioning of the organization. These are documents that establish the purpose and the function(s) of organization, as well as those relating to its legal and financial interests. These records have highest priority in respect to preservation. 

Born-digital:

Records originally created in electronic form, such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, html web pages, or digital images. The historic value of the content of born-digital records can largely be assessed in the same manner as print or paper records. Born-digital records selected for the LAUC archives have specific digital preservation needs which must also be addressed. 

As born-digital files can rapidly become unreadable due to software obsolescence, hardware failure, or file degradation/corruption, these types of files should be transferred to the LAUC Archives for preservation on an annual basis.