Vital Record: How do you Identify a Vital Record?

Only a small percentage of your records will be vital; most will fall into one of the following three categories:

Essential Records - These are records that will be needed within 72 hours after an emergency and, although it may be costly and difficult, CAN be reconstructed or replaced from other sources.

Useful Records - These are records which can be easily replaced. The time and cost of reproducing or accessing these records would be minimal because of the ready availability of these records at other locations.

Non-Essential Records - These are records that are of little or no value to the office and probably should never have been retained. Examples would be stores catalogs, brochures, extra forms, etc. Individual offices need to complete an analysis of their records in order to identify under which categories their records will fall.

For questions on the content of this page, please contact Records Management Services at 916-278-6312 or e-mail at recmgt@csus.edu.