On Wednesday, April 9, 2025, the Records Management Division of the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) welcomed colleagues from City agencies to join them at a social event celebrating Records and Information Management Month. More than twenty City agency Record Management Officers (RMOs) enjoyed the get-together that featured project updates, a trivia competition and light snacks.
Readers will be aware that City government’s records in the Municipal Archives and Library form the basis of these weekly blog posts. Have you considered how the records get to those places? The City’s RMOs are responsible for creating and maintaining lists of the types of records created and received at their offices. Records can range from the mundane such as invoices to those with historical or cultural significance. The RMOs categorize all of these records and manage their retention, disposal and sometimes transfer to the Archives or Library. In recent years, RMOs are focusing on managing the growing volume of born digital records that have amassed during the past twenty years.
DORIS Commissioner Pauline Toole greeted the assembled agency RMOs. She announced that sixteen grant applications had been submitted to the New York State Local Government Records Management Improvement Fund (LGRMIF) for a total of $1.1 million in funding. Many were for digitization projects that will permit agencies to dispose of hard copy records upon completion. Commissioner Toole noted that the Department of Transportation had submitted a proposal to fund the disposal of obsolete records housed at the GRM facility in New Jersey. She said the DORIS team would continue to assist agencies with this worthwhile cost-saving measure to identify other records eligible for disposal.
DORIS Record Management Division Director Rose Yndigoyen welcomed the group and led the program. She explained they planned the event to give RMOs the opportunity to meet one another, network, and share ideas. She recognized that RMOs at many agencies often worked solo.
As a way of initiating conversations, ice-breaker questions engaged participants in conversations about the most rewarding part of the job as RMO, the most challenging aspect of the work, and how the role of records management would evolve over the next few years.
She encouraged them to plan similar events at their agencies as a way of educating colleagues about the important work of records management.
Following the “ice-breaker” portion of the program, the hosts conducted a lively trivia competition. For the Record readers are challenged to compare their knowledge to the RMOs:
Answers:
Parks comprise approximately 14% of the land area of New York City;
Bowling Green Park is the City’s oldest public park;
Drag racing teenagers first became a problem in the 1660s;
In 2018, goats running on the track stopped the N train for several hours;
“Hip Hop” was born at a house party in The Bronx;
The Woolworth Building reigned as the world’s tallest building from 1913-1929;
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883;
The “Bad” music video was shot in the Hoyt Schermerhorn subway station;
George Martin’s fantasy world arose from memories of his childhood on Staten Island;
DORIS was established as a city agency in 1977.