Welcome

Adding to Our Team

The records management assistance team at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission welcomes back Erica Wilson-Lang! Erica is returning as an analyst after a hiatus. Read more about Erica who is now the point of contact for local governments in the Central region of Texas. The Central region is comprised of the following counties: Bastrop…

A Farewell to SLRM

I started at SLRM at 23 years old with a bad haircut, an eyebrow ring, and a dream: a full-time job that paid me enough to afford rent. I knew nothing about records management, didn’t even know it was a discipline, and had no idea where my birth certificate was. I was kind of a…

FAQ: How Does S.B. 944 Affect Us?

We have received a flurry of calls and emails after the 2019 legislative session from government entities concerned with the provisions of Senate Bill 944, which is an amendment to the Public Information Act (PIA).  In this article, we’ll highlight the parts of the bill concerning records management, particularly when it comes to text messaging.…

Auditing Your Records Management Program

We’ve spoken here before about the benefits of doing an audit on your records management program to ascertain whether your program is working as it should, and this month, I was able to ask some folks who have helped with an audit in their agencies about the details of the practice. Jerry Sorrells, Records Management…

Change in Law Affecting Retention of Precinct Election Records

Some of you may remember when we published this article, informing local government records management officers of a change to Election Code establishing a 6-month retention period for precinct election records not involving a federal office, while those involving federal offices retained a 22-month retention period. However, S.B. 5, passed during the 85th Legislature, repealed…

Electronic Records Resources Now Available

Updated March 3, 2022 TSLAC updated Bulletin 1: Electronic Records Standards and Procedures in 2017, and since then, we’ve been gathering resources to provide guidance to state agencies trying to fulfill the requirements of the bulletin. The bulletin was rewritten to be intentionally higher-level and broad, to allow for more considerations of electronic records in…