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Committees, Working Groups, and Records

Committees and Working Groups of Williams and Record Retention

Background:

Since 2019, the Records Management Program has been actively working to gather and preserve representations of all committee and working group records in order to reflect the diversity of conversations and histories on campus regarding policy and procedural changes. Previously, our primary focus for committee/working group material collection was faculty meeting minutes and Board of Trustees minutes. Other committee/working group records transfer was sporadic or not collected at all.

Full records compliance is very difficult at any institution and collecting all committee/ working group records is not expected; instead, it is a goal. By preserving, at a minimum, end-of-year reports and other foundational records, we hope committee and working group documentation will become easier and more streamlined in the long run.

  • Records to save and transfer for preservation:

    • end-of-year reports (at minimum)
    • minutes, agendas, synopses (at option of chair)
    • research materials (at option of chair)
    • outreach (at option of chair)
    • supporting documentation (if it exists).

    The minutes we seek do not include your personal notes. If minutes are not taken, you are encouraged to create a short overview of the meeting much like President Mandel sends to the Williams community after the Board of Trustees meetings. Agendas are also a powerful way of documenting policy and procedure conversations for the college record.

    The general committee records retention schedule illustrates records series to keep. You only need to be concerned with the series in highlighted in purple. Other series are gathered by the records manager.

  • The Williams Board of Trustees passed the Policy Regarding Management of College Records at their meeting on Oct 15, 2016. This policy affirms the Records Management Program at the College and the role of the Records Manager.

    "Records schedules and guidelines apply to material produced or maintained...in all areas and locations of the college, including members of the teaching faculty with non-teaching or administrative duties of either continuous or occasional nature, such as acting chairman of a department, a program or college committee."

  • If you are a committee or working group chair please review this presentation by the Records Manager on committee records retention from the November 2019 Faculty Meeting.

    Here is the general records retention schedule for committees and working groups. 

    If you are a committee or working group chair and would like to make an individualized records retention schedule, please reach out to the Records Manager.

    Reasons to have an individualized schedule for a committee/working group:

    • Is there personally identifiable information? (social security numbers)?
    • Do the records include hiring information?
    • Are there personnel records?
    • Are there student records?
    • Do the records include information on disciplinary cases?

    If you do not choose a customized schedule, there is a default restriction of 25 years for records outside of the reports and rosters.

    As a committee or working group chair, for good records management practices, please create either:

    1. A committee Google Shared Drive
    2. A committee Drive folder in your personal Google account

  • For information passed along from chair-to-chair like committee or working group foundational documents that do not require restrictions, please ask the records manager to add them to the appropriate committee folder in the Faculty Governance Share Drive.

    The Faculty Governance Shared Drive holds the final, archival versions of faculty meeting minutes from 1821 and end-of-year reports from all official committees of the College (reports prior to 2010 are being added). 

  • Here are directions on how to share records with the records manager using Google Drive.