About RM University
Records Management University (RMU) is a free educational resource dedicated to making records management understandable. RMU has been a trusted, no-cost resource for the records community since 2014, and this site is its online home — a growing library of in-depth articles, a question-and-answer collection, and a plain-language glossary. Whether you are a new records officer, a government employee navigating retention schedules, a FOIA professional, or simply trying to understand what a "record" is, our goal is to give you clear, accurate, and genuinely useful answers.
We cover the full discipline — from the fundamentals of the records lifecycle to retention and disposition, federal recordkeeping under the Federal Records Act, electronic records, FOIA and public records, declassification, information governance, and the standards that define trustworthy recordkeeping.
The RMU webinar series
Alongside this site, Records Management University runs a free live webinar series for records managers, information governance professionals, compliance officers, and IT managers — five one-hour sessions each semester, with expert instructors and guest speakers from government agencies. More than 9,000+ professionals have registered since 2014. Sessions are recorded and available on demand. You can register for the webinars for free.
How we work
Our articles, questions, and glossary entries cite primary sources from government agencies and non-profit professional organizations such as the National Archives (NARA), ISO, ARMA International, AIIM, and the Society of American Archivists. We do not link to commercial vendors, and our content is written to inform rather than to sell.
Hosted by Feith
Records Management University is an educational program hosted by Feith Systems — a records management software company with deep roots in U.S. federal recordkeeping, declassification, FOIA, and DoD 5015.2–certified records management. RMU has been a free, trusted resource since 2014. Feith's support keeps RMU free and open. Where a topic connects to Feith's areas of expertise — federal recordkeeping, declassification, FOIA, and DoD 5015.2–certified records management — we say so plainly in clearly labelled "Sponsored insight" notes, and you can always learn more at feith.com. Those notes are the only place we point you to the host; the educational content stands on its own.