Setting career goals for the New Year.

• Author: Wiler, Vicki
• Position: IN FOCUS: A Message from the Editor

The New Year is a time when we typically reassess our lives, including our professions. If you are thinking about your goals for 2014, you will find the articles in this issue rich with ideas for advancing--or even changing--your career.

If you organization is struggling to get control of the escalating volume of e-mail in users' mailboxes, you might consider whether implementing uniform retention rules could be the solution. Bill Saffady, Ph.D., writes that compared to schedule-based retention, the uniform retention approach is easier to understand, requires less decision-making and interpretation by mailbox owners, and can be implemented quickly with a minimum of employee training. Saffady's article provides a practical method for taking this approach. Stepping up to solve the e-mail challenge in your organization this year would certainly be a career booster!

Perhaps your organization is looking to wring more value out of its big data. The big data explosion has produced a big demand for data analysts and a great opportunity for RIM professionals to take a new career path, Nancy Barnes, Ph.D., CRM, CA, writes. Barnes explains the big data trend and shares the research she did to identify graduate degree and certificate programs that could help you get the education you might need to move into a data analyst career.

Or, are you interested in working in a different industry sector? Nial Raaen, CRM, writes in "Order in the Courts!" about the unique challenges of judicial records management and the principles that were recently published to help U.S. state courts assess and implement effective judicial records management. Because they are based on the Generally Accepted Recordkeeping...