In the world of Enterprise Content Management, records management is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created until they are disposed.  A record is a piece of information or document that has been created by the organization that is evidence of an event or activity. Records can be physical, on paper, or they can be electronic. The University has legal obligations to retain records for the correct amount of time.

SharePoint 2010 offers a number of features that make the management of electronic records easier:

• Ability to declare list items or pages as records, as well as documents.
• Records Center sites, where documents can be stored until they are disposed.  Includes the Content Organizer, which routes submitted records to the correct library based on content type or metadata values. Can hold tens of millions of records.
• In-place declaration of records; a document can be made a record within a client’s site, without moving it to the records management site, at which point it becomes read-only and cannot be deleted. People can still see the document and read its content.
• Ability to set up information policies, which define the retention periods of records based on either the location or the content type. Each information policy can define more than one stage.
• Holds with E-discovery. Used to find and hold documents during a legal proceeding.
• Audit log on each individual document.
• File Plan report, which lists all information polices for easier review.
• Document IDs, a unique identifier that stays with the document even after it has been moved to the Records Center.