Subject: What do you call it?? - Local government classification
As a former local government records manager (practised in Melbourne and WA) from Australia I could not resist adding my two cents worth...
Tony said ...Firstly what should it be called? Taxonomy (big word that lots of people
use but are never sure what it means), file plan (sounds a bit confusing
are we filing a plan or planing a file?), or classification (reminds me
of
the idea that people classify insects). Any other ideas? As this is one
of
the main tools that we need staff within or organisations to use and
understand to group information together, we should call it something
that
they can relate to.
I reply ...My understanding is classification is the big picture and file plans and thesauri are output formats of classification.
Tony said ...The next thing to decide is how we are going to organise the scheme.
Should
we be good and follow records mgt practice and use functions, or perhaps
it
should be organised by subject. If we did use subject as a basis we
could
more easily link into the other national programmes for sharing info.
For
example the government category list (GCL) sort of compulsory under the
e
government metadata scheme which we should all be following. Then there
are a number of schemes around for local government info on websites
seamless (or something similar) from Essex and aplaws (from newham i
think).
I reply...Local government in Australia readily lends itself to the functional approach eg town planning, building regulation, helath regulation, etc. However the predominant approach that I am aware of in a case file series based on the properties within local government. Each property file may be further split by functions such as building regulation, etc. Where functions are not property based or road based the functional term is used eg recreational services or community services (library, homecare, etc).
Anethea Ulvestad
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