As part of Utah’s Public Service Recognition Week, we want to honor the employees of the Utah Division of State Archives and Records Service, Records Analysis section, who assist Utah governmental agencies in the efficient management of their records.
Records analysts provide customer service to records officers and training for government employees—in person, via the phone or email, and through our websites. We supply certification training and guidance regarding records management issues, help records officers update or create retention schedules, and offer free classes, webinars, and conferences centered around records management and GRAMA issues.
Lorianne Ouderkirk is coming up on her five-year anniversary of working at the State Archives in July! She is the records analyst for all local governmental agencies, as well as law enforcement (including Highway Patrol), and the Utah Department of Health. Lorianne is a skilled listener and pays a lot of attention to detail. This serves her both in assisting customers and in coordinating and planning training events that draw hundreds of attendees from all over the state.
Her favorite part of the job is “The people that I get to work with across the state. The records officers and chief administrative officers that I work with are all very invested in caring for their agency’s records and mindful of the impact maintaining government records has on their agency and their community. I enjoy working and meeting with records officers to understand their needs, and then connecting them with relevant resources and helping them to achieve their goals.
“I also get to coordinate learning opportunities (conferences, webinars, etc.) to provide training on topics not covered in our standard training classes. I enjoy hearing from records officers about what topics they would like to learn about most, and I use those ideas for planning the next event.”
Rebekkah Shaw reviews, updates, and creates general retention schedules, which requires gathering input from stakeholders and trying to build consensus. She also serves as the analyst for all education governmental agencies—school districts, charter schools, state education offices, and higher education. Rebekkah has a gift for being able to review and understand vast amounts of data, and has been leading a major Division of Archives initiative to clean up data about record series in our content management system. She has been with the State Archives since 2010 and is a fantastic team player!
When asked what her favorite part of the job was, Rebekkah answered: “I love the relief I hear from records officers when they contact us feeling completely overwhelmed with a task, but feel prepared after talking with us. I love the satisfaction of a retention schedule approved by the State Records Committee after months of work. I suppose my favorite thing, if I must choose one–Picture this–There’s a “problem series.” Something about it doesn’t make sense and needs to be fixed. You know that moment when you’ve figured it out and now you can fix it? Those moments are my favorite.”
Renée Wilson has worked at the State Archives for 3.5 years, most of which was spent developing and administering the Open Records Portal. She currently is the records analyst for most state governmental agencies. She is passionate about putting our customers first and giving them the best possible experience while using our services. Renée excels at exploring new software applications, technology-related problem-solving, designing user-friendly tools, and providing stellar customer service. She has made it possible for us to broadcast our conferences live and post the recordings on our website, thereby reaching records officers unable to make the trip to Salt Lake City.
She says “My favorite part of my job is when I get to run a webinar or update a webpage or test new features of the website, or otherwise be helpful in some technology-related way. I love helping people find information! I like the people with whom I work, both within the Archives and at the agencies.”
We are so fortunate to have Lorianne, Rebekkah, and Renée on our team! Please join the State Archives in recognizing them along with other employees in blog posts throughout the week, both here and on our blog, Researching the Utah State Archives.
