n.a record of ephemeral value that can be destroyed immediately or after a short time periodKeegan 1943, 156In considering paper for records of transitory value, care should be exercised to select a paper that is no more than adequate for the needs of the record. There is considerable doubt that paper composed of a mixture of rag and chemically purified wood fibers exhibits greater longevity than papers composed solely of chemically purified wood fibers. With this in mind, and since permanence is not the determining factor, it would seem not only logical but economical to select paper composed of chemical wood for transitory records.Leahy 1949, 232Records of value can now be preserved only by aggressive, planned destruction of the vast majority of duplicated or transitory records . . .Pinkett 1978, 419Well known to archivists and record managers is the transitory nature of many types of public records. They normally include records relating to repetitive facilitative activities of short-term administrative or legal concern dealing with facets of internal management common to most agencies. Such matters include personnel administration, supply and property management, expenditure and cost accounting, transportation service, space management, and communication service. Such transitory records can be made more easily separable under planned file arrangements involving separate file folders or separate file series. Accordingly, valuable records can be freed from entangling trivia that often impede archival accessioning.Caron and Brown 2013, 156Issued by the former National Archives [of Canada] in cooperation with the Treasury Board Secretariat in 1990, the Transitory Records Authority was among the most used (and abused) records disposition instruments within government because it provided institutions with enormously wide latitudes of discretion and interpretation on the identification and disposal of transitory records, since they were defined as “records that are required only for a limited time to ensure the completion of a routine action or the preparation of a subsequent record, or records that are not required by government to control, support, or document the delivery of programs, to carry out operations, to make decisions or to account for business activity.”NARA 2017b, 84Transitory records are routine records of short term value (generally less than 180 days).UWaterloo 2022Transitory records are of temporary or insignificant value, needed to complete a current routine or to prepare the final version of records, or because you need the information they contain for current work. ¶ Transitory records should be destroyed on a regular basis, when their usefulness has ended. The general rule of thumb is to destroy transitory records when your operational need for them has ended and before the end of the retention period for the official record.
