2017-2018 exchange Nov Dec 2017 Newsletter FINAL | Page 12

A Conversation
About Data
Bill Saffady and
Jennifer Best, J.D.,
Editor-In-Chief,
exchange
Jen Best: While I’m going to include your biography in the Newslet-
ter, it would be great if you could give an overview about your back-
ground and how you became involved in records management. A lot
of times in my experience, people don’t say, “I want to be in records
management”. It is something they fall into.
Bill Saffady: I think that’s correct. Almost no one selects records man-
agement as a first career choice. I originally had a doctorate in histo-
ry and I came up the archives route. While I was working in an ar-
chives position, the job of records manager became open and I was
offered it. Then I subsequently got a Masters degree in Library Sci-
ence and started teaching, which included teaching records manage-
ment seminars at George Washington University. From there, I start-
ed getting consulting work and that was it.
JB: In writing all of your books, what were your thoughts around da-
ta?
BS: Data is treated as an other type of recorded information. Reten-
tion applies to documents, images, data and paper records. The fun-
damentals do not change. A database would be subject to the same
thing we would do with paper or other electronic records.
JB: I think that most records professionals are comfortable with the
disposition of managing paper and electronic files, but still struggle
with providing guidance regarding the disposition of structured data
given the inherent difficulties in doing so. Would you say that employ-
12