Mississippi Administrative Code
Title 16 - History, Humanities and Arts
Part 2 - Archives and Records Services Division
Chapter 9 - Public Records - Standards: Destruction of Original Records after Imaging


Current through September 24, 2024

Introduction.

A. Purpose:

These rules provide the standards that must be used by state agencies, counties, municipalities, or other entities of the State of Mississippi, when undertaking imaging technology applications with the intent of disposing of the original public records. This rule replaces relevant portions of "Reproduction of records of archival or enduring value, storage of the copies; and destruction of the originals."

The purpose of this rule is to ensure that public records maintained only in digital format through the use of an optical imaging system will remain accessible to the public, state agency and/or local government for the full period that the record must be maintained.

B. Authority:

The authority for the establishment of this rule is § 25-59-9 and § 25-59-29, Mississippi Code of 1972, Annotated.

C. Scope:

1. This rule is applicable to all custodians of public records (see definition of "public records" at E.18) including state agencies, counties, municipalities, school districts, and other entities of the State of Mississippi.

2. This rule establishes the minimum requirements necessary for disposal of original public records after duplication in an imaging system.

3. This rule applies to records series which have been scheduled as permanent by the State Records Committee or Local Government Records Committee.

D. Intent:

The Department of Archives and History is aware that there may be instances where an agency or local government has an imaging application which, due to the nature of the application, might require adoption of technical standards that are not in compliance with the standards outlined in this rule. It is not the intention of Department of Archives and History to impose standards upon an agency or local government that will reduce the intended benefits of an imaging application, provided the Department can be confident that steps have been taken to insure the future migration of the images in accordance with retention requirements. In such cases, the agency or local government may request to work with the Department to develop alternative systems. The use of an alternate system should be considered exceptional, and the Department will not approve disposal of original records unless it is fully confident that all measures insuring future migration of data are in place.

E. Definitions:

1. AIIM - the Association for Information and Image Management, a standards-setting body affiliated with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which is the principal developer of standards for microforms and information storage technologies involving images, such as optical disks and scanners.

2. ANSI - the American National Standards Institute, a private national standards organization in the United States, which coordinates the development and maintenance of various industry standards.

3. CCITT - International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (predecessor of ITU).

4. COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk) - the storage on optical disk of coded data generated by a host computer. COLD replaces COM (Computer Output to Microfilm) as a mainframe storage medium.

5. CD-ROM (Compact Disk - Read Only Memory) - a data storage system using compact disks as the medium.

6. DPI (Dots Per Inch) - in scanning, a measurement of resolution - the number of pixels a scanner can physically distinguish in each vertical and horizontal inch of an original image.

7. Flatbed - scanner design in which the document is placed on a glass surface similar to placing an item on the glass of a photocopier. This allows for the scanning of materials that cannot be fed through an automatic document feeder.

8. ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) - the ability of software to recognize and translate bit mapped scans or faxes of hand printed or machine printed alphanumeric characters into machine-readable text.

9. IEC - International Electrotechnical Commission.

10. ISO - the International Organization for Standardization, which coordinates national standards worldwide.

11. ITU - International Telecommunication Union (formerly CCITT).

12. JPEG - a standard for still image compression developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group.

13. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) - the ability of software to recognize and translate bitmapped scans or faxes of printed alphanumeric characters into machine-readable text.

14. Open System - a system with characteristics that comply with specified, publicly maintained, readily available standards and that therefore can be connected to other systems that comply with those same standards.

15. Optical Disk - a direct access storage device that is written and read by laser light.

16. Original Record - a public record in the format as created or received, or in the format as reproduced in accordance with standards issued by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

17. Public Body - any department, bureau, division, council, commission, committee, subcommittee, board, agency and any other entity of the state or a political subdivision thereof, and any municipal corporation and any other entity created by the Constitution or by law, executive order, ordinance or resolution. Within the meaning of this chapter, the term "entity" shall not be construed to include individuals employed by a public body or any appointed or elected public official.

18. Public Records - all books, records, papers, accounts, letters, maps, photographs, films, cards, tapes, recordings or reproductions thereof, and any other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, having been used, being in use, or prepared, possessed or retained for use in the conduct, transaction or performance of any business, transaction, work, duty or function of any public body, or required to be maintained by any public body (as defined in Mississippi Code Annotated 25-59-3).

19. TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) - a family of bitmap file formats for describing and storing color and grayscale images.

20. WORM (Write Once, Read Many) - storage media (usually recordable CD-ROM or optical disk) that is not re-writable. Information can only be written to the disk once. It is permanently stored on the disk.

Disclaimer: These regulations may not be the most recent version. Mississippi may have more current or accurate information. We make no warranties or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained on this site or the information linked to on the state site. Please check official sources.
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