[IARA - State Agency Records Managers] January 2023 Monthly Bulletin and Chat Invitation for ...February

🧧🎆🎉🍾 Happy No Longer 2022, Records Managers! 🍾🎉🎆🧧

Considering the weather prediction for this week, my New Year's wish for you is "Stay warm out there."

My New Year's wish for me is to be able to consistently type "2023" by July at the latest.

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For those of you who have just joined us...

Our December RM Chat was canceled due to holiday, lack of news, and my apparent ability to predict the future, since I actually ended up needing to be absent from work on that day. So the following is a re-run for most of you, but I'm leaving it in for the benefit of a couple of new folks on our list.

On MS Teams, we had our most recent Records Managers Chat, officially the November chat, on the first day of December, because November lacked available Thursdays due to Thanksgiving.

We met with 19 Records Managers from 16 agencies! Attending from IARA were Amy Robinson (State Records Analyst),  Anna Lucas (Electronic Records Archivist), and Jeannine Roe (Electronic Records Archivist).

We discussed November's bulletin topics, which were:

• Upcoming changes to the State General Retention Schedule... that didn't get made because we cancelled the December Oversight Committee on Public Records meeting. The next OCPR meeting will take place the day before our RM Chat, so those of you in the chat will be the first to get an overview of the updates!
  
  
• What the State Board of Accounts audit requirement means when you see it in retention schedules, and how to make sure your records comply.

I've posted a link to the YouTube video of the November-in-December chat in our RM Bulletins and Chat Archive, where you can also find all of the previous bulletins we've sent out. .

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News You Can Use Need

Despite what some people may or may not have heard me swear regarding holding the January meeting of the Oversight Committee on Public Records on the Capitol Building steps if I have to... there will be no January meeting of the Oversight Committee on Public Records. Given that the cancellation is due to the weather prediction for this week, I humbly beg you not to hold me to that oath in the middle of a snowstorm. So. Everything I've said about General Retention Schedule updates now applies to the February OCPR meeting on 2/22/2023, and next month's RM Chat on 2/23.

 

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News You Can't Use

I'm going to semi-plagiarize my co-Amy's December bulletin for the County/Local records managers🐾 and say "I have a new kitten!" By which I mostly mean my spouse has a new kitten. Her name is Lucy (which immediately became Lucy-Lou and then just Lulu), and she's: around 8 months old a tuxedo cat look at those teeny tiny mittens terrified of, in no particular order: me the next-youngest cat in the house, Christina, who is this one an absolute sweetheart to everyone else, but for some mysterious cat reason has decided to bully the new kid anything taller than her who isn't: my wife the two cats who would shower love on a pack of angry weasels if we invited one in very familiar with all the tiny, dark spaces in our house that she can hide in. We're working on it. 🐈

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RM Topic of the Month: Records Management New Year's Resolutions!

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) released a new blog post on the subject in The Texas Record. The author, Katherine Hoffman, says, "The beginning of the new year is a time for reflection and planning for the coming months. What records management goals do you have for 2023? Here are a few ideas to get you thinking..." In addition to three great suggestions (the first of which is what we aim do every month in our RM Chats) and resources to get you started if you choose one of them, she provides a link to a list of RM New Year's Resolutions from 2011, which are all still great choices to do today. (If you ignore the suggestions that are very specific to the TSLAC program and services.)  Formats and technology may surge ahead, but good records management practices never change!
One of my Records Management Resolutions is: Find time to work on indexing our original paper retention schedule files so that they can eventually be both microfilmed and digitized. This project will take a long time and many hands to complete, but once it's done, it will give IARA - and possibly you if we can find a good way to provide online access - the ability to view and search through a retention schedule's entire history. All those previous versions that you (and anyone at IARA who isn't me) currently have to search via the "Call Amy and have her comb through the folders" method, available from the comfort of our desks. With a safe, permanent copy in the State Archives so that for the first time in ever, we'll be following our own retention schedule for retention schedules.	This is the one box out of five that is actually finished. Those yellow pages are indexes for each folder.

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So what are your Records Management Resolutions for 2023? Let's use Thursday's RM Chat to talk about that, since we're not going to be talking about things that didn't happen at the OCPR meeting. We can discuss what records projects we'd like to finish (or at least start), connections we'd like to make, improvements to our user education or agency workflow or even just "Get those 40 boxes in the back room labeled so we can ship them off to the Records Center." If you already have some resolutions in mind (or have even started working on them!), come along and share those with us. If you don't, give it a think over the next couple of days before the RM Chat and see if any ideas present themselves. You can tell us about them out loud or in the text chat -- or just listen; you're always welcome to do that too. Maybe someone else's goal or project will spark up new ideas for your own agency that you'd never considered!

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January Records Managers Chat

Meeting Information 

Date: 2023-01-26
Time: 11 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.  EST
Place: Microsoft Teams

About the Meeting

This 30-minute meetup is an informal setting in which to ask questions or talk about records management concerns; normally I'll begin by introducing any IARA colleagues attending, talk a bit about the topic of the monthly bulletin and make any announcements, then open things up for questions and discussion.

I've included an agenda to help keep me us all on topic, so there'll be plenty of time for your questions and records management discussion once Amy remembers to click Mute!

Adding Yourself to the Meeting Invite List

✉ Desktop Outlook

• Save the attached Monthly State Records Managers Chat.ics file to your desktop.
• Make sure Outlook is open.
  
• Double-click the .ics file.
  
• Outlook will open it up as a traditional meeting invitation.
• Click "Accept" to add it to your calendar.
• Because this meeting is recurring, you should never have to add yourself again.

✉ Outlook on the Web

• Save the attached Monthly State Records Managers Chat.ics file to your desktop.
  
• In your web version of Outlook, go to the Calendar page.
  
• Choose "Add Calendar," then in the left pane, "Upload from file."
  
• Click "Browse" and find the .ics file, then click "Open."
  
• Choose a preferred calendar from the dropdown list. (Even if you only have one.)
• Click "Import."
• Outlook will add the meeting to your calendar.
• Because this meeting is recurring, you should never have to add yourself again.

Meeting-Up in MS Teams

Are you new to using Microsoft Teams? No worries, IARA can help you navigate.

MS Teams is a collaboration app that many state agencies are now using to stay organized and have conversations with colleagues inside and outside of the agency.

But if your agency doesn't use Teams? No worries. You don't need to have the software installed on your computer to participate in a Teams call. 
 

To Join the Meeting By Phone

1. Dial 1-317-552-1674 at the designated meeting time, then enter this PIN when prompted: 
   707 553 068#
   
   
2. We'll let you into the meeting.
    

To Join the Meeting by Computer

1. Click here at the designated meeting time. 
   
   
2. A new tab or window will open in your default web browser. From there:
   
   
   • Choose the option to join on the web if you don't normally use Teams, then click "Join now."
     
     
   • Join through your desktop or mobile application if you're familiar with using Teams and would prefer that to the web version. 
      

If you have other questions about how to use Teams, or about the meetup, just contact me and we'll figure things out together!

. . .

Looking forward to seeing you,

Amy A. Robinson  (CIP) | (she/her)
State Government Records Analyst
Indiana Archives and Records Administration

o: 317-232-3285  |  f: 317-233-1713
e: arobinson@iara.in.gov |  w: www.in.gov/iara
a: 402 W. Washington St., Room W472, Indianapolis, IN 46204

 

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• StateRMChat-agenda-2023-01.pdf
• Monthly State Records Managers Chat.ics