I've been shamed into it...
Hi all, I'm the University of London Records Manager (new post, only been in existence since June; there's been no R/M until now). Prior to this job I was the part time Archivist/Records Manager for the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and before that was at the Australian Archives and the Tasmanian State Archives (and in between was a backpacker, tealady, typist, data inputter, barmaid, housewife...not necessarily in that order).
I'm concentrating on using FOI as a stick to beat my organisation with, then using the services which records management can offer to staff as the carrot. I'm doing weekly training sessions for all staff on the basics, coping with a 60 year paper backlog, churning out specific records management procedures and trying to keep abreast of all the horrors of electronic records and their implications for R/M. Any and all advice and discussion on ERMS, EDMS or EDRMS (I have learnt some of the jargon) will be gratefully ingested, passed on, cribbed etc but could I please put in a plea for plain English to be used - I am a member of the Australian records managers listserve which is enormously interesting and useful but I can't understand one word in 10 of what they are going on about as all the debate is about various types of ERMS and it's all in jargon. They also don't seem to have to bother about paper records any more, and yet I'm sure I recall the odd paper document floating around when I worked there (admittedly that was last century) Comments from Oz members gratefully received...maybe they have solved all the problems of paper R/M, even as regards FOI? In which case tell us how you did it.
Oh yes, I'm also the chair of the HE/FE Records Managers Group. Check out our website at
http://internal.bath.ac.uk/records-mgmnt/urmgroup
for all sorts of useful info on Data Protection, FOI, R/M procedures etc.
Clare Cowling
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