The act of pre-defining for a specific class of information the archiving criteria for invoking an archiving event as well as pre-defining the archiving requirements. Archiving requirements are also denoted by the term retention.

Archiving criteria may include specific or combinations of criteria such as the expiration of the specified on-line availability period for the information object, a change in status of the information object, by specific user command, etc.

Requirements for the archiving event may include the pre-definition of the destined archiving storage media, archiving device and location, archiving period, disposal instruction, etc.