Glossary Terms

 

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Terminology Description
Registry:

A central location where a governmental body stores its active files. 

 
Regulations:

The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Regulations, 2002, Regulation R158 published in the Government Gazette No. 24085 of 20 Nov. 2002.

 
Retention period:

a. The length of time that records should be retained in offices before they are either transferred into archival custody or destroyed/deleted. As far as non-archival records are concerned the head of the office decides on the retention periods in accordance with the administrative use of the records and the legal obligations the records need to fulfill. In the case of archival records the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Act, 1996 as amended, determines that such records must normally be kept for twenty years after the end of the year in which they were created, before they are transferred into archival custody. 

 

b. In an electronic document management system, the length of time a record is kept online before it is moved to near-line or off-line storage in a hierarchical storage management system. 

 
Schedule for records other than correspondence systems:

A control mechanism for records other than correspondence files (other records), which contains a description and the disposal instructions and retention periods of all other records. The is to be used for the management of all records other than correspondence systems. Records other than correspondence systems include archival material such as registers, index cards, photographs, computer printouts, minutes of the council, etc., which for practical considerations are not filed on the correspondence files of the filing system. It consists of the following parts: 

 

  • Schedule for paper-based records other than correspondence files. The National Archives and Records Service has compiled prototypes of the schedule for paper-based records other than correspondence systems, which can be used as the framework for compiling schedules. The prototypes are D2 Schedule for paper-based records other than correspondence systems: All governmental bodies except local authorities and part 2 of D8 Prototype schedule for records other than correspondence files for local authorities; 
  • Schedule for electronic records systems other than the electronic correspondence system. See Directive D7; 
  • Schedule for microfilm records. An example is contained in Annexure 11 of the Records Management Policy Manual; 
  • Schedule for audio-visual records. Even though films, videos, sound recordings and related records are subject to legal deposit in terms of the Legal Deposit Act, 1997, they are still subject to the same requirements regarding their sound management as all the other groups of records. Audio-visual records should be described in a schedule for audio-visual records. This should be done so as to ensure that they are properly administered and retention periods are timeously determined. The precise manner of scheduling should be negotiated with the National Film, Video and Sound Archives (NFVSA). Preferably the schedule should contain a description of the records categories, a broad description of the content of the records, as well as the storage location of each category. In some cases it might also be necessary to provide detailed contextual information as well as a list of each individual item, depending what the NFVSA's preference is. 

 

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