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Apologies for cross and re posting - questionnaire extended until Friday evening

Final call for respondents for this original survey on Blockchain technology and its use and application by archival and information & records management professionals. 

Many thanks to those who have already responded.

Survey details:

•	Closes Friday 12 May at 11.30pm
•	4 mins to complete (slightly longer if you add comments)
•	Mobile friendly
•	Anonymous
•	Aimed at information and records management professionals
•	Aimed at all levels of technological proficiency
•	Consent to share on social media

Click here for the survey: https://northumbria.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blockchain-and-irm-survey-2017


Blockchain technology, and its underlying applications, is the new disruptive technology that has emerged in recent years which has excited a lot of people because of its ‘potential to transform everything’* 

Hello, my name is Rob Begley, a Masters student on the Information and Records Management course at Northumbria University. I am looking for responses to an anonymous and mobile friendly 4 minute questionnaire which is hosted on the secure, and UK based, Bristol Online Surveys servers. 

This survey forms part of my dissertation and the results will be used to establish whether information professionals around the world are accepting of, and using, new technologies - in particular Blockchain. Final results will not only feed into my MSc dissertation report but will also feature in a future IRMS Bulletin article and LinkedIn.

This study has three complementary objectives:
1.	To set out what blockchain technology is and what are its potential uses within information management that have so far been identified.
2.	To determine to what extent is Blockchain Technology is used within the Information Management community/profession, or if not, then what are the barriers encountered and why?
3.	To establish what are people’s experience who use Blockchain Technology and what can we learn from this to promote the wider application of Blockchain Technology, if at all.

Aimed primarily at information professionals but open to all so please join in to help us get a clearer picture – even if you don’t know about Blockchain Technology!  Feel free to share this survey with colleagues via social media.

Blockchain, essentially, is an open distributed ledger that lives on a network of synchronised computers environment that collectively capture and verify when a transaction takes place – therefore eliminating a reliance on trusted third parties. Any time something of value gets exchanged, the data surrounding that exchange are recorded, encrypted and placed into a “block” visible by anyone granted access to the network. Those blocks are then “chained” together chronologically, creating a timeline that can be traced to an initial transaction.

Blockchain has been described as a 'record keeping technology which could dramatically alter recordkeeping'** and could change how many information professionals work in the future. But is it really of any practical use and who actually uses it? Is it the Messiah or just a very naughty boy? This questionnaire aims to answer those questions.

* Tapscott, D. & A. (2016) The Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World, Penguin Books, ISBN 978-0670069972
** Lemieux, V. (2016) ‘Blockchain Technology for Recordkeeping: Help or Hype?’  Vancouver, BC: The University of British Columbia.
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