Tech Forum

Over the past month, I have taken great joy in cleaning out my office. It is amazing how much junk gets thrown in there. I believe that when I am done, only 20% of its original contents will remain.

Now to attack the filing cabinet.

Our new Bishop asked me what to do with old manuals taking up space. Any chance the church will re-use, say, the Brigham Young book used for Priesthood and Relief Society several years back? It's still available for the Gospel Library app, after all.

My office is not a library, a closet, or a pantry. Anything that is not current or required by the stake/ward will be disposed of appropriately. If the meetinghouse library doesn't want old manuals, they go to recycling. If they are proprietary manuals, they will be shredded.

Dana, I like your attitude. We cleaned out our clerks office last year. Then we made it know that we were not the storage closet for the organizations.

I was just called as ward clerk last year. I had on my schedule to destroy anything past retention guidelines. I found 3 yrs of finance and some membership hard copies back to 1970’s. That, plus old manuals and such, prompted me to ask bishop if we could have a shredding truck come by the church and just toss the stuff in. It would take many days to shred on our little machine. He ok’ed that. Happy shredding!!

showseason wrote:I found 3 yrs of finance and some membership hard copies back to 1970’s.

Keep a watch out for Priesthood ordinations. Not all of them made it into the "system" and the data is needed.

Other then that, happy shredding.

As for the old PH/RS manuals, I'd offer them to the meetinghouse library, or put them out on a table with a "free" sign.

I have double-checked many priesthood ordination forms, and found a lot of data was either entered incorrectly or not entered at all into MLS. As I clean, I plan to verify every one before I shred it.

mrrad wrote:Our new Bishop asked me what to do with old manuals taking up space. Any chance the church will re-use, say, the Brigham Young book used for Priesthood and Relief Society several years back? It's still available for the Gospel Library app, after all.

I don't know when Distribution Services no longer takes returns, but they will certainly take them at the end of the year (e.g., if you have any George Albert Smith manuals right now). So before you give them away or throw them away, see if you can return them for credit.

We took about three large trashcans of old financial papers out of the stake clerk's office this afternoon. I think the oldest records we had were from 2001. The shredder and I were getting tired, so we decided to take it to the second counselor's house and burn it in his fireplace.

We still have a couple piles of old (2006) Handbooks to destroy. I also have a filing cabinet drawer of priesthood ordination records to review before I destroy them. Oh, and I haven't touched all the disciplinary council records in the stake president's credenza.

You cannot imagine how many hundreds of pounds of paper I have removed so far. (Or maybe you can.)

When I became ward clerk, there were over 15 years of financial records stored in both the bishop's and clerk's offices. In all there were 8 boxes of materials. I found a document destruction company that I could take the material to and watch it destroyed. 30 minutes later and for $25.00 the problem was resolved.