Records and documents that are no longer used frequently can be placed in secure storage in the interests of saving office space. When storing hardcopy records on campus, do not store boxes in areas where they may be insecure, where they may be moved without the unit’s knowledge, or where they could be exposed to hazards such as water or pests.
Electronic records with a long or permanent retention period should be retained on the University's network so that they are maintained through system upgrades and do not become unavailable due to software or hardware obsolescence. They should not be stored on removable media—such as USB drives, or external hard drives—which are easily lost and thus present a security problem, or over time become corrupted and unreadable.
Offsite Storage
The University’s preferred supplier for offsite records and document storage is Iron Mountain. Your unit's Records Management Contact will have access to the Iron Mountain Connect online portal to facilitate the pick up and retrieval of your records boxes. If you are unsure of who your unit's Records Management Contact person is, please contact the Records Manager.
Move Records to Iron Mountain
Contact the Records Manager before you start to prepare your records for transfer. The Records Management and Privacy Office now scans your boxes in order to pre-populate the inventory sheet, then sends that pre-populated form to you.
Users will then fill out the remaining required fields of the transfer form and submit the it to the Records Manager for final review. Once the spreadsheet has been approved the Records Manager will send it to Iron Mountain and notify you that a pick up can be arranged using IM Connect.
Note that only records that have a disposal date under an authorized records retention schedule should be moved to offsite storage.
Move Boxes to Iron Mountain - Checklist (PDF, 133 KB)
Order Boxes
Hardcopy records are usually stored in 1.2 cubic-foot boxes (also known as bankers boxes). Boxes with pre-printed barcodes can be ordered directly from Iron Mountain.
How to Order Supplies from Iron Mountain (PDF, 371 KB)
Retrieve Records from Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain will provide next-day delivery for requests to return records to Queen's. The request needs to be with Iron Mountain by 3:30 p.m. to provide next day service.