Records are evidence of what the institution does.

They capture its activities and

transactions and are assets to the College. Effective records management ensures the
information that has value and importance is retrievable, authentic and accurate.
Records come in many different forms: paper, electronic, website, and databases. Files
can contain memos, contracts, emails, digital images, reports, and graphics among
others. Files can reside in file drawers, on desktops, on servers and flash drives.

Records and the information contained in them are everyone's responsibility! Each
employee has an important role to play in protecting the College and ensuring its future
by creating, using, organizing, retrieving and disposing of records according to
established guidelines.

The College has embarked on a campus-wide program to provide managers and

employees with information about managing records and information in your care. With
funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Office of the President, the
College Archives has staff devoted to working with schools, departments, offices and
individuals who manage the vital information of the College. The School for Social Work,
the Clark Science Center and the Center for Foreign Languages and Culture are the
focus of our work, however, all schools, departments, and offices are encouraged to
learn more about Records Services @ Smith!

For further information about the College's records management and information policy
see:
Records Management Policy (Smith College, Revised May 2013)

URL: http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/archives/records

2.1 Review of Related Literature

2.1_1 Foreign Literature

The terms record, document and data are not interchangeable. According to
BS15489; a Record is "information created, received and maintained as evidence
and/or information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in
the transaction of business". A record has to be retained as long as it has value and is
destroyed at the end of that period. A Document therefore, is everything else so "does a
'document' really need to be stored at all?" Today with the advances in technology,
churches have adapted to change and in certain circumstances are accepting emails
and other electronic forms of documents or correspondences as 'best evidence' where
bone-fide hard copy originals are not available. In the past when churches were looking
for solutions to remove

or reduce costs from their projects, their first port was to remove old files from their
expensive office space and put it into deep storage. In a remote warehouse where the
price was low and access was minimal.

This type of service tended to be used for inactive archival documents, as a low
cost method of keeping them safe until the end of their statutory retention period when
they could be destroyed. This is the origins of Document Storage. As legislation and
technology came. Into place requiring churches and organizations to keep documents
as evidence and technology has developed, the need has moved to that of managing
information. This sort of active management, so an organization can quickly and easily
locate & retrieve the information it seeks, has proven to offer such organizations
competitive advantage in addition to the more obvious benefit of regulatory compliance.
Storing documents is not a simple as putting boxes in an empty warehouse. With the
introduction of computers and the electronically created and stored data they have
given rise to, we produce more paper records per head of employee than ever before.
Companies increasingly find the 'paperless office' continues to be a myth though the
'less-paper' office is becoming a reality.

2.1_2 Local Literature

The world of local document storage has transformed into an industry that is
unrecognizable from its origins, although the paper document continues to remain
constant, in the minefield of acronyms that surround the technology that has come to
encompass a full Records Management Program. As part of the wider picture
organizations are expected to have a Business Continuity Plan (SCP) that includes
Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP) all of which need to be safely secured but easy to
retrieve. Enterprise content management (ECM); workflow mapping, digitization, hard
copy storage web hosting of images and data mining are all part of the transformation
that has come to represent the records management industry.

After understanding the difference between what needs to be stored and what
does not one then has to start understanding the different types or records and who is
creating them. Most personnel are potential creators and they all need to understand
whether the information they are creating should be stored securely and confidentially
or securely destroyed. We have all heard of the recent stories of high profile laptops and
information being stolen as well as identity theft fraudsters who rummage in bins to
obtain details of clients in order to assume their identity A formal in-house survey to
understand who and where information should be stored can go a long way to creating
a system understandable to all.

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RELATED STUDIES
2.2_1 Foreign Studies

The key to designing a successful records management system is to incorporate the

following characteristics: firstly, one needs to be consistent in the manner in which
records are captured, managed and maintained irrespective of whether they are
electronic or paper records. Secondly they must be accessible to authorized people.
One of the fears that people have when out sourcing records is discussed is whether
their records will be accessible. A good records management company should be
able to guarantee that records will be physically or digitally delivered to within 24
hours. Information must be held in a secure environment protect against floods, fire
and intruders. Most records management organizations have password protected
entry into their premises and do not publicly disclose the identity of their clients. In
addition to the physical security and protection of the storage environment the
documents also need to be shown to be the original, free of any alteration.

This may require special management and it is important that the provider is
able to adhere to stringent management controls. Finally, retention policies should
reflect the requirements of law It is pre-requisite to be able to provide a full audit
trial of any item at any time and where appropriate a 'Certificate of Destruction' to
prove that the document was destroyed in accordance with government laws.
Despite the records management industry being quite a complex industry the
barriers of entry remain very low and we still find anyone with a warehouse a
transport network feels more capable than records management specialist to enter
into the industry at the detriment of their clients who may

find the lower costs being charged are actually resulting in their records not being
held in an environmentally controlled warehouse and resulting in damaged records

22.2 Local Studies

While meeting statutory requirements is important, widespread usage of the
records management system primarily rests upon meeting the first two goals (filing
and retrieving records). In this era of enterprise-wide rollouts of records
management systems; the users of the classification scheme have changed
dramatically While historically the classification was only really used by the
centralized records management staff, it will now be used by staff throughout the
organization. In order to meet these needs; the classification scheme must be
understandable by general business staff It is clear that:

If staffs are unable to easily determine where to file records, the records
management system will become littered with miss-filed documents If staff cannot
easily find documents at a later date, then they will simply abandon use of the
records management system entirely. For these reasons, the effective design of the
classification scheme becomes an imperative. 2 3 Difference between the Previous
Study and the Proposed Study The existing system of Immaculate United Methodist
Church(lUMC) only uses manual process for record management, they just use
typewriters and
bond papers when they have to input information so therefore the papers of the
members are not secure. And also they need a lot of time to organize the records of
the registrants.

The proposed system "Immaculate United Methodist Church Record

Management System" will help the members of the church to have a clear access of
their records and also a printed output of it also the records of the members will be
secured. They don't have to write and type manually. The said system will also
automatically generate all records of the members. In this manner the workloads of
the administrator and the other person's that are related on the organization.
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