I came late to this thread and was one of those to suffer, as Peter
Kurilecz predicted, because I subscribed to the daily digest which quickly
becomes indigestible as a thread lengthens. Having persisted it made
fascinating reading. I apologise for the length of this posting.
I agree with Steve; it is generally not a case of marketing. There is an
old rule of marketing that you don’t market your services until you have
services to market. As Steve says, it is (in large part) the product. If
we had a product that people wanted the world, as Ralph Waldo Emerson
said, would beat a path to our door. If we really want to form a coherent
RM discipline, rather than remain as a group of loosely-related
problem-solving individuals only connected by the label ‘records manager’,
we need to fundamentally review the underlying model; which cannot even
then remain static. Steve has made some proposals for an ‘RM 2.0’ in his
now famous book. Hopefully this will be a catalyst for further discussion.
I don’t think that the growth of the PC was the problem; it was yet
another missed opportunity. As Peter Emmerson points out, there was no
golden age of efficient records management in the paper world. There were
good practices but there were many bad practices and inefficiencies. In
the late 1940s the Institute of Public Administration was able to write,
“…registry delays, and unintelligent registry filing, are suffered to a
greater or lesser extent by all Government Departments”.
Ten years ago, Michael Pemberton gave reasoned arguments in the Records
Management Journal why records management could not be considered to be a
profession. He measured RM against the characteristics of “genuine”
professions [abstract and practical knowledge (‘know what’ and ‘know how’
being constantly extended by research); social relevance; code of ethics;
education programmes; professional culture; autonomy; sense of commitment
and client services]. Although some things have improved, the weaknesses
he identified generally still exist. He proposed a basic action plan which
was ignored.
I agree with Stephen Macintosh that we should look beyond our RM borders.
Julie McLeod (who has been one of the great forces for driving up
professionalism in the RM world) reminded us of initiatives such as
InterPARES at this year’s RMS conference in Edinburgh. We have good
peer-reviewed articles in the UK’s Records Management Journal but should
not ignore the archives literature where many valuable records-related
papers appear, in particular Archivaria (Canada), Archives & Manuscripts
(Australia), American Archivist and Journal of the Society of Archivists
(UK). A recent example that should be widely read was a thought
provoking analysis of the concepts of a record (going beyond currently
accepted approaches) was contained in a pair of articles by UK-based
Geoffrey Yeo in the two most recent editions of American Archivist .
(Perhaps the RMS could look providing a Journal abstracting service). The
International Council on Archives (ICA) produces much work of great
potential value to records managers. A very recent example is the
‘Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in Electronic Office
Environments’. Module 3 of this (http://www.ica.org/en/node/38968) fills
a long-standing gap by setting out guidelines and requirements for records
in business systems (i.e. not in an ERMS). Valuable information is also
contained in the publications of the UK-based Business Archives Council
(http://www.businessarchivescouncil.org.uk/).
I have to stop myself writing at length on the original
classification/taxonomy discussions that initiated this thread. Coming to
RM with a degree in Biology (before later gaining qualifications in the RM
field). I found the approach to, and understanding of, classification
less than basic. It is, or should be, as Schellenberg stated 50 years ago,
“… basic to the management of current records”. Apart from anything else,
in this computer age we should not be talking in terms a single
classification scheme whether hierarchical, faceted or dynamic. Metadata
offers tremendous potential. Others (such as web information architects)
are seeing the great value of classifying information but I doubt if they
often see records managers as a source of expertise to draw on.
This has sounded negative but like others I see this thread as one reason
to see the glass as being half full. The fact too that we now have books,
such as Steve’s (and others such as Carol Choksy’s Domesticating
Information – whether or not you agree with all the content) that take the
literature beyond the level of introductory textbooks is also an indicator
that we are developing. However we need to take positive and concerted
action since, as Pemberton wrote, the field of records management will not
arrive at a recognised professional standing by divine intervention.
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