Records Management Humor

• Employee's toe was injured when he kicked the filing cabinet.
• Employee's psychic told them not to.
• Employee's dog was stressed out.
• I don't want anyone to know what I do.
• It is not in my nature.
• None of my files are involved in litigation.
• Not part of my employee workplan.
• I don't want to remember the past.
• If I file it, I'll know where it is but never need it. If I don't file it, I'll need it but never know where it is.

1. Hunting for important documents adds excitement to a boring schedule.
2. Stacking papers on your desk protects it from ultraviolet radiation.
3. Being as confused as everyone else helps you fit in.
4. Moving piles of paper keeps you in shape.
5. If you understood what you were doing, you would be terrified.
6. Confusion brings out the best in you.
7. Organization kills creativity.
8. Shuffling papers prevents dust from piling up.
9. Your coworkers will never find what they're seeking.
10. Clutter magnifies your importance.

• Helping in ways you never imagined.
• Preserving our past, providing access to our future.
• Preserving the past, preparing the future, protecting the present.
• Preserving yesterday, managing today, preparing for tomorrow.
• Ensuring the future by preserving the past.
• Ensuring access to essential information.
• When you absolutely need to know where it is.
• Just saying "No!" to chaos.
• Collate, fold, spindle, mutilate, and shred.
• Knowing what to throw away.
• Never having to say you are sorry.
• Like an elevator - you do not notice it until it is not there.
• Like oxygen – no one ever notices it unless it is missing.
• Like a life preserver; you never think you will need it but....
• Increasing efficiency, reducing costs.
• The only profession that knows in advance what it is going to forget.

• Archivists make it last longer.
• Let a Records Manager in your drawers.
• Ancient Egyptians wrote their history on walls, because they were smart enough to know that, if they put it in the files, it would be lost forever. (from a cartoon)
• The best laid plans of mice and men are all filed away somewhere.
• The only important information in a hierarchy is who knows what.
• Always keep a record of data. It indicates you've been working.

• Information is power.
• Time is money.
• Records should earn their keep.
• The future is in the making, not the waiting.
• Control your records before they control you.
• ...not all information is created equal!!
• For the Record...
• Information becomes far more a commercial commodity, ephemeral, instant, disposable, yet powerful, indispensable, and sought after. It'll be an interesting ride, but can we cope?
• Behind every successful manager is a Records Manager.
• Records are food for thought, not for mice.
• Appraisal is the acid test of where a person stands in the archival world.
• Information is the currency of democracy. (Thomas Jefferson)
• To Keep or Not to Keep... Is that Your Question?
• To shred or not to shred; that is the question.
• Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
• Records - a renewable source.
• Know when to hold'em, stow'em and throw'em.
• If you purge it, they will come.
• Let records management take you... from heap to harmony... from chaos to control.
• Protecting the government’s assets.
• Information which is not communicated is valueless. Information which cannot be found is worthless. The value of Information is directly related to its accessibility.
• If only we knew what we already know.
• Records are the corporate memory, everything else is anecdote.
• Success is when preparation meets opportunity.
• "Without access to information there is no transparency; without transparency there is no accountability; and without transparency and accountability there is no democracy." (Dr. Harrison Mwakyembe, Senior Lecturer in Law from the University of Dar es Salaam)
• "Without records, there is no information; without information, there is no functionality; without functionality, we're as good as dead."
• Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. (Ronald Reagan)
• Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune. (Oscar Wilde)
• The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with cylinder oil, and coat their outsides with sprayed rubber film, and let them statically await the next emergency. (Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), U.S. mathematician, educator, founder of Cybernetics)

• Archives are forever.
• What's past is prologue. (William Shakespeare in "The Tempest". Also, chiseled onto the edifice of the National Archives of the United States
• The great use of a life is to spend it for something that outlasts it. (William James)
• Preserving our past and flourishing in the future.
• The written word endures - be sure to create it and preserve it. (a National Archives poster)
• History is everything.
• Glory is acquired by virtue but preserved by letters. (Petrarch)
• Archivists are like Mechanics, no one wants to give them money or the time of day until something breaks when they become God's amongst men. (Alex Rankin)
• People say I'm a packrat - but I prefer the term archivist.
• Of all our national assets, Archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization. (Arthur G. Doughty, Dominion Archivist, 1904-1935)
• Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. (Santayana)