Celebrating 10 years of The Texas Record

By guest columnist, Megan Carey, Manager, Records Management Assistance

This past May SLRM’s popular blog, The Texas Record, quietly turned 10 years old amidst a pandemic. When the Records Management Assistance (RMA) unit staff realized this milestone was coming up, they quickly jumped into action, arranging for a bespoke blog banner and looking to the blog’s history for key indications of how it began. The Texas Record was “born” in May 2010 as RMA staff transitioned away from communicating with their customers via semiannual newsletters (The Local Record and The State Record). The format and manner of delivery may have changed, however, the goal was the same: to create an RMA hub where customers could just as easily learn about training opportunities and FAQs as they could about current events in the records management field and meet new government information analysts (GIA).

Not much has changed in 10 years except…

  • The Texas Record now entertains over 3,000 monthly subscribers and in its 10 year tenure has shared 625 articles to its followers.

    The reach of the blog has grown over the past few years as is evidenced by the number of hits to the blog. Even as recently as Fiscal Year 2018, The Texas Record received more than 142,000 hits. In Fiscal Year 2019 that was surpassed by more than 150,000 hits, and now, right at the end of Fiscal Year 2020, the blog has more than 191,000 hits. Even in the beginning, email management was a hot topic. The very first blog post shared by The Texas Record was “FAQ: How long do I keep my email?” written by Angela Ossar on May 11, 2010. Among the top 20 blog posts accessed in August 2020 were topics of disposition, using retention schedules, and determining retention periods; not surprising given it’s the end of the fiscal year!

  • It is still the one-stop-shop for training announcements and new concepts in the RM field.

    Although analysts have come and gone, RMA staff brainstorm, research, and author the posts. The maintenance and growth of The Texas Record is very much a group effort; the team crowdsources potential ideas and topics to explore and draws inspiration from webinars watched, consulting completed, and plumbing the depths of an analyst’s mind and creativity. From there all topics are fair game.

The Texas Record is excited about more milestones to come and promises to continue providing content that encourages improvement of records management programs (“How to Approach an Office Records Management Overhaul”) and shares emerging topics in the field (“Off the Record: Unlawful Disposition”), while also reminding everyone that records management may be their job, but it also often permeates our lives, including the media we consume (“RIM-brain in Movies and TV”).

Links in this post:

The Texas Record Blog, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/slrm/blog/

“How to Approach an Office Records Management Overhaul, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/slrm/blog/2020/07/how-to-approach-an-office-records-management-overhaul/

“Off the Record: Unlawful Disposition,” https://www.tsl.texas.gov/slrm/blog/2020/08/off-the-record-unlawful-disposition/

“RIM-brain in Movies and TV,” https://www.tsl.texas.gov/slrm/blog/2020/08/rim-brain-in-movies-and-tv/

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