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'One of a kind' war records staging facility gets Air Force, national review

  • Published
  • By SSgt Amanda Savannah
  • 9 AF/USAFCENT Public Affairs
SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. --  For the first time, Headquarters Air Force and the National Archive and Records Administration visited the only Air Force war records staging facility in existence during a trip here June 30 to July 2.

The Air Force records officer and NARA representatives toured the U.S. Air Forces Central Staging Facility and attended several briefings to gather information about the facility and management of war records.

"We (the U.S. AFCENT Command Records Management office) have been managing these war records on our own since 2007, so (the Air Force and NARA) just wanted to see exactly what we're doing, how we're managing these records, if we're managing them correctly and so on," said Master Sgt. Lenore Waterman, U.S. AFCENT Command Records Manager. "Until 2007, war records were never centrally managed anywhere in the Air Force before. There was no process."

Rich Carlson, NARA supervisory archives specialist, said the facility and its operation is "the gold standard."

"I am very impressed with the work the group has done thus far with preserving war records," he said.

Although U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility war records have been individually maintained at each AOR location since 2003, there was no guidance or control for their overall management. At Shaw Air Force Base, the 20th Fighter Wing Records Manager was providing administrative assistance to records managers in the AOR, but was unable to give them the command-unique, hands-on training they needed to be successful in managing those records, Sergeant Waterman said.

So the U.S. AFCENT Command Records Management office surveyed records management in the AOR and found "boxes upon boxes" of records stored in multiple military containers.

"People just didn't know what to do with them," Sergeant Waterman said. "They had years and years back of Bills of Lading, contract agreements and other records that were of historical value that were just sitting in CONEX boxes."

Records managers in the AOR have since been trained to follow all applicable Air Force instructions and directives and know how to properly package, transition and ship the records to the war records group. However, the group needed oversight to begin the process.

Enter Senior Master Sgt. Shelly Bowens, U.S. AFCENT command section superintendent, and former U. S. AFCENT Knowledge Operations Management functional manager.

"The development of our own system was necessary because there was no proper guidance to maintain records in the AOR," Sergeant Bowens said. "I provided top cover to help make this happen as well as get the (war records) group its own facility."

Sergeant Bowens participated in the Air Force and NARA visit and said she was excited to show off everyone's hard work.

Sergeant Waterman has enjoyed highlighting a process she believes is under-appreciated.

"I think records management is a good thing because this information is where we find out how not to do what we did wrong and how to continue to do what we did right," she said. "If we manage (records) correctly, it gives everyone a one-stop shop to find where the story begins, where it's ending and all the information in between. I love RM; I'm probably the only one who shares that feeling, but I do. It's the one thing that everyone hates to do but in the long run it's what everybody really wants, because everyone wants their records."

In the future, the U.S. AFCENT Command Records Management office will archive Air Force war records electronically, and the information will be stored "in bits and bytes, making it a paperless process," Sergeant Waterman said. For now, her team is happy to maintain their "gold standard" facility.