Packing your boxes well will help preserve the records as well as make them easier to find.
Letter-size folders should be packed facing the 12" side of the box and legal-size folders packed facing the 15" side. If you have a mixture of the two folder sizes, pack them facing the 15" side.
While facing them in that direction will take more space than necessary for the letter-size folders, it is better to prevent damage to the legal-size folders and records.
Leave several inches of space between the last file folder and the box so that you don't overpack the boxes.
Remove any hanging file folders since they don't fit well in the boxes and will eventually damage the box.
For transfers to the Depository, each box should contain only one type of record. In other words, don't put things like correspondence, routine financial records, and student records in the same box. Each type of record, or series, has its own retention plan, and mixing different series may require you to keep certain records longer than is required.
Pack the records in the same order they were filed in your office.
The four necessary elements on a box label are:
- University department
- Series title of the material
- Date span of the material
- Box number and the total number of boxes in the series
For Archives transfers, there is no need to re-folder the records as the Archives will in any case replace your standard file folders with acid-free folders anyway.
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