It is crucial for bulletins to keep usable records of important aspects of their activities. Good records are necessary to keep track of what has been done, so that the future activities of the bulletin can be pursued on the basis of full and accurate knowledge of what has occurred and what has been decided in the past. A bulletin that does not preserve its archives will meet problems in the future if questions are raised about the bulletin's standpoints and opinions on different questions. Good management of records and archives is necessary to ensure that information can be readily retrieved when needed.

Information accumulated in archives can be reused for a variety of purposes by the bulletin, e.g. auditing aspects of bulletin work (see Chapter 12), or perhaps used for benchmarking between drug bulletins within ISDB.

Keeping a record of certain areas of bulletin work, such as article development, is obvious and essential and is easy to integrate into the routine work of the bulletin. Not quite so obvious to do, but arguably just as important, is to keep an account of important events in the development of the bulletin. Keeping a record of these more occasional and perhaps complex events is more difficult to build in to everyday work.