Editing Records management (section)

=== Classification ===
Records managers use classification or categorization of record types to logically organize records created and maintained by an institution.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Caravaca|first=Maria Mata|date=May 2017|title=Elements and Relationships within a records classification scheme|url=https://www.jlis.it/article/view/12374|journal=JLIS.it|volume=8|issue=2|pages=19–33|access-date=2021-02-28|archive-date=2021-01-17|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210117070318/https://www.jlis.it/article/view/12374|url-status=dead}}</ref> Such classifications assist in functions such as creation, organization, storage, retrieval, movement, and destruction of records.

At the highest level of classification are physical versus electronic records. (This is disputable; records are defined as such regardless of media. ISO 15489 and other best practices promulgate a functions based, rather than media based classification, because the law defines records as certain kinds of information regardless of media.)

'''Physical records''' are those records, such as paper, that can be touched and which take up physical space.

'''Electronic records''', also often referred to as '''digital records''', are those records that are generated with and used by [[information technology]] devices.

Classification of records is achieved through the design, maintenance, and application of [[taxonomy (general)|taxonomies]], which allow records managers to perform functions such as the categorization, tagging, segmenting, or grouping of records according to various traits.<ref>{{cite journal|author1=Jeremy C. Maxwell |author2=Annie I. Antón |author3=Peter Swire |author4=Maria Riaz |author5=Christopher M. McCraw |issue=2|title=A legal cross-references taxonomy for reasoning about compliance requirements|date=June 2012|pages=99–115|doi=10.1007/s00766-012-0152-5|volume=17|journal=Requirements Engineering|s2cid=15603509 }}</ref>

==== Enterprise records ====
''Enterprise records'' represent those records that are common to most enterprises, regardless of their function, purpose, or sector. Such records often revolve around the day-to-day operations of an enterprise and cover areas such as but not limited litigation, employee management, consultant or contractor management, customer engagements, purchases, sales, and contracts.

The types of enterprises that produce and work with such records include but are not limited to for-profit companies, non-profit companies, and government agencies.

==== Industry records ====
''Industry records'' represent those records that are common and apply only to a specific industry or set of industries. Examples include but are not limited to medical industry records (e.g., the [[Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act]]), pharmaceutical industry records, and food industry records.

==== Legal hold records ====
''[[Legal hold]]'' records are those records that are mandated, usually by legal counsel or compliance personnel, to be held for a period of time, either by a government or by an enterprise, and for the purposes of addressing potential issues associated with compliance audits and litigation. Such records are assigned ''Legal Hold'' traits that are in addition to classifications which are as a result of enterprise or [[industry classification]]s.

Legal hold data traits may include but are not limited to things such as legal hold flags (e.g. Legal Hold = True or False), the organization driving the legal hold, descriptions of why records must be legally held, what period of time records must be held for, and the hold location.