Managing Records: Services for State Agencies: Newsletters
Newsletter: February 2008
Welcome to the February 2008 State Agency RMO Newsletter!
Statement on the Recent Arrest for Alleged Theft of Historic State Artifacts
As many of you may know, the New York State Archives suffered a painful blow when we learned that Daniel Lorello, a long-time employee of the State Archives, had been arrested for allegedly stealing historic documents from the State Library. Hundreds of documents are involved and he is accused of selling some of them for personal profit on eBay. The investigation is still underway so we are not able to discuss it further. If you have questions or concerns about whether or how this might relate to your organization, please forward those to Judy Hohmann, State Archives Public Information Officer, who is working with the State Education Department Public Information Office to relay questions to appropriate authorities for response.
We are now assembling respected national experts in research library and archives security to examine our current security procedures and make recommendations to strengthen them, and a full report will be made public by the Regents and the Commissioner of Education.
It's only human nature to have questions, but this is an ongoing criminal investigation by the Attorney General's office and we cannot make any comment of any kind beyond this statement.
Workshops and Training
The Archives has made an abbreviated version of its spring training schedule available via the web. All workshops are open to anyone who is interested in attending. To register, go to http://www.archives.nysed.gov and click on "Workshops" on the left menu. Send an e-mail to the address listed on the page with your name, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address, and include the title and date of the workshop you wish to attend. You will be contacted to confirm and complete the registration. Directions will be sent in the mail within a week of the workshop date. Contact ARCHTRAIN@mail.nysed.gov if you have questions about our workshops. Stay tuned for the full spring workshop schedule coming to our website in March 2008! The current State Agency workshops are:
March 26, 2008: Using State Archives Retention Schedules - Cultural Education Center, Albany
April 17, 2008: Managing Electronic Records - State Records Center, Albany
The Records Center Prepares to Expand
The Executive Budget recommended $12.585 million for an addition to the Records Center. Our success was the result of making the business case for the expansion and working with OGS and a design firm that produced a program report, outlining some of the details for constructing an addition. It will double the capacity of the records center and include a 60,000 cubic-foot area with environmental controls suitable for archival storage. Given that this is in the Governor's budget already, before the intervention of the Legislature, it is more than likely that this money will still be in the final budget. We don't expect to see the addition completed until 2011, but consider this a great development in our program. This expanded facility will save the state money in the long run, allow us to better serve agency storage needs and provide us with much needed additional archival storage space.
Record Center Fee Increase
We recently succeeded in making the argument that the fee for storage at the records center should be increased. This fee was set for the first time in 1987, and has never been increased even though operating expenses go up annually. Effective 4/1/09, the annual fee will be $2.90 for a box of paper records or an individual computer tape or microfilm roll.
2008 State General Schedule Available
In case you missed last week’s announcement, the 2008 revision of the state general schedule became effective January 2008 and is available on our website.
http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/records/mr_pub_genschedule.shtml
If you have any questions about the general schedule, please contact Bob McDonnell at 518-474-6926.
To Be Announced
Watch this space for information about the upcoming 2008 RMO meeting!
That’s it for this month! State Agency Services is here to help you, so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
Jennifer O’Neill
joneill@mail.nysed.gov
(518) 473-2112
Sarah Durling
sdurling@mail.nysed.gov
(518) 473-6803
