Records Center
A facility (or service) for the low-cost storage of inactive records during their retention period, providing controlled storage, retrieval, and scheduled disposition.
A records center is a facility — operated in-house, by a vendor, or by a government records center — designed for the economical storage of inactive records during the remainder of their retention period. It’s not an archive (which preserves permanent records indefinitely); it’s interim storage for records that must be kept but are rarely accessed.
A good records center provides controlled storage (security, environmental protection), retrieval on request, and scheduled disposition — destroying records when their retention ends or transferring permanent ones to an archives. In the U.S. federal government, agencies use Federal Records Centers run by NARA. The core value is cost: moving inactive records out of expensive office space (or live systems) into low-cost storage while keeping them findable and on a disposition schedule.