Interesting thread.
I think what Adam's list for the community of practice is missing is:
- someone/some people to manage it all including stimulating debate during quiet times to help build community.
It's much more demanding to own a forum and to build a community from scratch in a new space than it is to own a jiscmail list (even a new one) - I do both. Don't all shout at once to volunteer for this </cynic>
Wouldn't we all say email is a big problem to manage from a recordkeeping perspective in the workplace? - but the personal practices that have been implied by the range of responses ("just delete the irrelevant", "posters should be more considerate", "this is a silo/we need another habitat") suggest to me that as records managers we ourselves have the issues that our colleagues have in our organisations about collaboration, volume, poor email management etc. Which we regularly discuss, with concern. A case of Physician, heal thyself?
Personally, I subscribe to 13 jiscmail lists - and own 1 (small one). I get the digest format on all lists, so the day's previous emails come in 1 email the following day. Nothing is so urgent on any of the lists that I need to receive individual postings immediately they are sent. I also work offline most of the day, choosing when to download new email from the server and clear it from my inbox. I find this works really well for me, freeing my time up to concentrate on things that are more valuable to my employer than me "doing email". I normally pick up emails mid-morning and mid-afternoon - so there's no delay on any urgent work emails longer than if I were in a meeting, for example. And with anything really urgent, people tend to ring.
I'm also a member of various LinkedIn groups, subscribe to a range of blogs as well as blogging myself, follow lots of people on Twitter (the #recordsmanagement hashtag is used sporadically, minimally compared to #archives) and am a member of several Ning and Community sites- interestingly the records management ning site seems to have had a spluttering start then died a death in the last year. Plus keep up with peer-reviewed reading, not just trade mags and grey literature which are often advertisements masquerading as articles.
A lot of this is to do with professional development - knowing that there are likely to be a range of sources of information and a range of people I'll need to talk to at any one time, and making time to scan them, decide what's relevant, and be involved in the relevant regularly (but not necessarily all the time). (Now where have we all heard that before?!).
And a lot of it is to with active personal practice - knowing when email is a good tool and when it's NOT, using good subject headings, checking whether posting to the list or to the poster BEFORE hitting send, making sure what you want the recipient to do with the email is clear, [insert your own email bugbear here]...
Happy Friday!
Sarah
obviously a paragon of virtue....
M Sarah Wickham, MA, MA, Registered Practitioner
University Records Manager
University of Huddersfield
+44 (0)1484 473 935
Web: http://www.hud.ac.uk/cls/recordsmanagement/
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