(Please note: Some cartoons originally posted in this article caused some technical difficulties, so they have been temporarily removed and replaced with links. Hopefully we will be able to restore the original images soon.)
I’m always on the look out for humourous cartoons to use in training materials and the Dilbert comic strip by Scott Adams continues to delight. Over the years, I’ve found great strips on a variety of information management topics like the discoverability of e-mail, original or ‘wet ink’ signatures, and records retention. I’ve been using the following records retention strip for many years to give students a humourous look at how not to do records retention.
I also mine Dilbert for cartoons on topics related to the practice of information management such as strategic planning, project management, social media, cloud computing, and email usage.  Check out the end of this post for some of my favourite strips on these and other topics.
I found Scott Adams’ July 19th characterization of off-site storage as putting “trees in jail” particularly funny, but also very apt. There are lots of organizations whose sizeable collections of poorly indexed and rarely accessed records are effectively serving life sentences off-site because retention periods (even if they exist) can’t be applied without significant time and effort. How many of your organization’s records are in jail?
If you’re not a follower of Dilbert (you can set an alert to receive each day’s new strip here), you may also want to check out his July 18th post about of-site storage.
Dilbert cartoons are searchable here and there are options to buy, license, share, email, and print each strip. Although the site says strips are available from January 1, 1989 to date, I wasn’t able to find some of my favourite strips when I searched the site by keyword/subject. But I could find them if I searched by publication date (or clicked through numerous strips covering the approximate time periods in which I thought they were published).  Here are some of my favourite IM and IM-related posts.  Enjoy!
