On Jul 7, 2005, at 4:09 AM, Liz Scott-Wilson wrote:
> We are writing an information governance framework to sit alongside
> our new information policies. Does anyone know the genesis of the
> specific concept of “declaring a record”? Is there any legislative,
> regulatory or other source or mandate? In particular, the phrase
> itself and associated meaning, rather the concept of a document
> becoming a record.
The earliest uses of the expression to "declare as a record" that I'm
familiar with are those relating to notaries and their practices, where
they would seal something to "declare it a record" and it would then be
accepted by a Court, etc.
As for the mention of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and
NARA, you will find near the bottom of this page a reference to the
expression "Declare a Record" for the Electronic Record Keeping (ERK)
System,
http://www.archives.gov/records_management/policy_and_guidance/
prod6a.html
DECLARE A RECORD: Recognize a record to be a record, identify it as as
a record.
which comes from the Federal Records Management Glossary, current
Edition 1993, but it goes back a lot further.
Some of the most pervasive use of this phrase is associated with ERM
systems over the past 3-5 years, and it dates back to an old
programming terminology of "declaring a record" as shown in this
example 9.4.2
http://www.unix.org.ua/orelly/oracle/prog2/ch09_04.htm
Or in this example
http://developers.omnimark.com/documentation/keyword/1879.htm
If you look at many of the hits you receive on a search for "declaring
a document a record" in Google, they relate to the process in an ERMS
where you identify an asset placed in the repository as a "record" and
how it's treated thereafter, with respect to the inability to alter or
delete it without specified permissions being set.
I don't know if it's as important to identify the origin of it's use as
it is to clearly define it as your organization intends to use it.
Larry Medina
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