IARA County/Local Records Management - Finding your Schedule

Good morning Clerks and staff,

Do you struggle at times with figuring out which retention schedule to use for a specific record? This email is intended to help you establish a thought process to decide which retention schedule to use and how to search for a record series.

Whether you're a county clerk or represent another local agency, this is the basic order in which you should look at retention schedules:

1. First, look at your office-specific retention schedule. For clerks, that's the Non-Judicial County Clerk (CL). 
   
   
2. Second, look at the County/Local General retention schedule (GEN). 
   
   
3. Third, you may need to look to another county/local retention schedule. While there are obvious schedules which relate to a specific office that are unlikely to help you, there are also several county/local schedules built around records that fulfill a specific function, no matter which office creates them. Those schedules are:

1. Cities and Towns (CT) – you may not be a municipal employee, but that doesn’t mean you don’t create similar records for whatever plot of land your office provides services to.
2. Special Districts (SD) – this schedule covers some specific office types, like airport authorities and water districts, but it also covers scientific and engineering records, which might be generated by any public office.
3. Public Safety (PSA) – it’s not just for Law Enforcement agencies; it’s for any office or entity that provides government-funded emergency or safety services. Your fire department may be paid by the city, but you’ll find out what to do with ambulance run and fire safety inspection records on the Public Safety schedule.
4. Zoning, Planning, Development, and Enforcement (LAND) – any level of government from a village to a metropolis is going to eventually create records about zoning and the enforcement of those zones.

Once you've found the retention schedule you need, make sure when looking at the record series to read the description of the record type carefully. While many record series contain a list of specific forms which are definitely covered by the series, this is not meant to limit its use to just those forms. If the description and the title describe the records you have, there’s a good chance that this is the record series you should use.

One final tip:

• If you don’t have your own office-specific schedule…
• If you don’t know whether you have your own schedule…
• If you have your own schedule, but nothing on it seems to cover the records you have…

Check GEN first! before you invest time and energy exploring the retention schedules listed above to see if there’s anything that applies to your records. The County/Local General Retention Schedule covers many different record types, and was designed to help every county/local government office no matter how big or how small.

These are your retention schedules. Become familiar with them, keep the files on your desktop, bookmark the IARA website, and be sure to read through new editions when they’re announced to find out what may have changed for your records.

If all else fails, if you’re not sure which schedule or series is right for you, or if you just need someone to translate what this unfamiliar records management language means in plain English, you can always contact me!

AMY CHRISTIANSEN JANICKI

Records Management Liaison

Indiana Archives and Records Administration

o: 812-929-3882

e: achristiansenjanicki@iara.in.gov |

w: www.in.gov/iara

a: 402 W Washington St, Room W472, Indianapolis, IN 46204

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• county_general.pdf
• county_clerk.pdf