Colleagues may be interested in getting hold of this month's copy of the
Records Management Society's newsletter. Professor Charles Oppenheim
(Loughborough University) has written a very interesting article on the
implications of the 1998 Accounting Standard for intangible assets, such as
information assets.
Basically if information managers can capitalise the value of information
assets onto their organisation's balance sheets, libraries, records centres
and archives can be seen as asset holders rather than overheads.
Of course the big question is how to value information assets but Professor
Oppenheim has recently been awarded a grant from the British Library to
help find the answers to this little problem.
I suggest that you might like to ask your finance colleagues about the 1998
Accounting Standard- you might be interested to hear whether the Finance
Departments have already discussed the need to capitalise on intangible
assets.
Lastly I suggest that colleagues look out for the arrival of the Freedom of
Information draft bill this week. Also I heard from the Office of the Data
Protection Registrar last week that we might be looking at a September date
for the arrival of the DP's secondary legislation.
Gillian Whichelo
Chairman, RMG, Society of Archivists
British Waterways
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