Organizing Storage

Status Report:  Organizing Contents of Dino’s Storage Unit
Or, “Chaos Is Merely Order Waiting To Be Deciphered”
(Jose Saramago)

Submitted by Carla Larson

When LWVLL closed its physical office space to reduce operating costs, all office contents were transferred into storage at Dino’s (84th Street & Northern Lights Drive, Lincoln). Terri Rittenburg coordinated the transfer, Cynthia Peterson and Susan Scott obtained shelving units, Dorothy Ramsey donated multiple large capacity plastic storage bins, and Sharon Nemeth provided invaluable historical context.

Step #1:  In June Scott Larson and I did an initial review of the storage unit contents, sorting boxes, folders and file cabinet drawers into generalized categories and taping an identifying paper label to the wall above each category:

     

Step #2:  Mimi Wickless, Jane Witte and I spent a day together sub-sorting materials within each category.  Without a written Document Retention Policy for guidance, the only materials we determined by consensus to safely discard on the spot were mainly piles of newspaper articles, reasoning that originals are archived by and electronically accessible from publishing entities.

Step #3:  Currently I am researching Nebraska Secretary of State Retention Schedule 24-71 (local agencies), Neb. Rev. Stat. §84-1212 governing records retention requirements, IRS guidelines and policy formats of 3 other states’ LWV organizations (Minnesota, Iowa, Texas), with the goal of drafting a Document Retention Policy for LWVLL Board to review, edit and adopt at its August 1, 2024 meeting. After adoption by the Board, we can apply the policy to making granular decisions about disposition of stored items. Since we are not a government agency, we are not required to first obtain approval of our policy from the Secretary of State.

Next Steps:  Several boxes and file cabinet drawers are overflowing with paper minutes of past Board meetings and membership meetings, which need to be date-sorted into ascending chronological order. We have been granted generous off-hours use of the high speed scanner at my last workplace, at no cost to LWVLL, so the date-sorted paper minutes can eventually be scanned and saved in space-saving digital format (with back-up separate e-storage location to safeguard against corruption or destruction of the first location’s e-files).

Nebraska State Historical Society (state archives) currently has neither scan nor e-storage capability (pending hiring of personnel to manage that job), but they will accept our original paper minutes after we have scanned them. They also provided an itemized list of additional types of LWVLL historical documents they would have interest in and capacity to house.

Phyllis Arth and Deb Dulgar have also offered to help with additional sorting needs.  Since “many hands make light work” we’d welcome additional help from any other LWVLL members with good eyes and abundant patience to accurately date-sort the minutes in preparation for scanning.

Please email me at LLVicePres@lincolnleague.org if you have questions.