Destroying Records
- For records containing sensitive or Personally Identifiable Information (PII), documents must be shredded or confidentially destroyed. For all other records, recycling or purging can be conducted by the records custodian. Records custodians must complete the Certificate of Records Destruction at the time the records are destroyed.
- Records stored in digital format should be destroyed in a manner consistent with media sanitization methods. The Office of Information Technology can provide assistance on these methods.
- For questions concerning destruction of large numbers of physical records, contact the Office of Campus Sustainability.
- NOTE: No record shall be destroyed so long as it pertains to any pending legal case, claim, or action; or to any federal or state audit until such actions have been concluded.
Anytime you destroy records, you must document it by filling out this simple form:
https://fs26.formsite.com/xDqYjm/rmdcod/index.html
- Agency: Austin Peay State University
- Division: Department owning the records that were destroyed
- Address/Location: Box number of Department
- Allotment Code: 33260
- Record Series Title: This is a broad description of each record type you destroy, such as "Research Records" or "Fiscal Administrative Documents"
- RDA Number: Enter the RDA number for the type of record that you are destroying, such as "SW-U07" or "SW20"
- Date range of records disposed: The month and year the records began and ended
- Volume and Volume Type: This is how much space the records took up prior to destruction, and is measured in cubic feet for paper (one cubic foot is approximately the size of one regular paper box) and GBs for electronic items (1 GB is roughly equal to 1000 MB), which can be viewed in the file details before deleting
- Note: There is another line for record series through Volume so you can enter two record types per form; this line is not required if you only have one record type.
- Destruction: Select the method you used to destroy the records
- Date of Records Destruction: Enter the year, month, and day you destroyed the records, or use the calendar function
- Contact Name, Title, Email, and Signature: This is your information, as the person destroying the records
- Agency Records Officer: Christina Chester-Fangman
- Agency: Austin Peay State University
Destroying extra copies is the only type of destruction that does not need to be documented because it is not destroying the record, just duplicates. This applies to extra copies of any format.
Example 1: You have 10 copies of a marketing brochure for your department. You can destroy 9 of those copies without documenting it because those are extra copies.
Example 2: You have student worker agreements on paper and would like to digitize them. Once they are digitized, you can destroy the paper copies because those are just extra copies now.