Surely the real point is not that we should be looking for a new term to
describe what we do. After all Archives, as what ever form of word, more
than adequately covers what we do and have being doing for a lot longer than
anyone else. What we should be doing is getting involved with the IT people,
who after all are legitimately undertaking an information storage process,
to ensure that they understand the difference between permanent and short
term storage and that they are actually assigning the right information from
their systems to the right storage area. We are the experts in the field of
information retention and destruction and without our help and guidance the
long term retention of vital information by our IT departments will probably
not meet the future requirements of our institutions or researchers.

A few thoughts

Regards

Nigel



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Boardman, Carl - Cultural Services
> [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 20 November 2002 15:26
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Electronic retention
>
> I'm afraid the IT use of "archiving" is now one more casualty in the
> battle
> to prevent the semi-literate denizens of the media destroying the language
> in their desperate search for novelty - cf. the use of "culture" for
> "ethos"
> ("the compensation culture", "the evaluation culture") and the fascinating
> habit of sticking "gate" at the end of any proper noun where they think
> there is even the most tenuous parallel with Watergate. Hopefully, anyone?
>
> Over in Oxfordshire we never accepted "archive" as a verb anyway. We
> accession, catalogue, acquire, permanently retain, shove it in the
> strongrooms, and a host of other activities, but anyone who archives is
> almost by definition an administrator or an IT operative, both of whom are
> then asked politely, "And is that permanent or limited retention?" Mind
> you,
> I had a serious fight to prevent a link appearing on the Council's website
> to ARCHIVES - by which they meant obsolete webpages which people might
> want
> to recheck for some purpose.
>
> Carl Boardman
> Oxfordshire Record Office
>
> Oxfordshire Record Office is a section of Cultural Services in Oxfordshire
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