Records may have temporary value or enduring value; these designations refer to how long a record is useful and should be saved. Records of temporary value are only required to be retained for a limited period of time. Records of enduring value must be retained indefinitely.  In personal use, a shopping list is usually of temporary value – it is needed while at the store, but can generally be discarded once everything on the list has been purchased. However, a family photograph is more likely to have enduring value – and will want to be preserved for as long as possible. In government use, receipts for small purchases usually have temporary value, whereas annual reports are generally considered to have enduring value.

Archives are tasked with preserving records of enduring value.

Records are NOT: newspaper clippings, copies of documents that exist elsewhere. These are called use copies or convenience copies, but these are not the official copy of record. If the CAO’s office emails a scan of a memo to all staff, and a staff member chooses to save the copy to their desktop for easy access, it does not become a record. The original memo signed by the CAO is the original record that should be maintained. Archivists and Records managers can help differentiate between non-records, records of temporary value and records of enduring value.