Records managers and archivists

Do you know the difference between a records manager and an archivist? An  archivist can be records manager and records managers can be archivists, but they are separate distinctly different professions – more like close first cousins than identical twins.  The Society of American Archivists is open to both, but each profession has its own certification examination and its own committees. Here’s the difference. A records manager is specifically tasked with the maintenance of records from creation to disposal for a specific entity, like a university, corporation, or other business or non-profit group.  Records managers are also the ones that keep the records of state and the federal governments.  Think of the name of NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration.  Certification for records managers is very rigorous and involves a different set of expertise than that required of a special collections archivist.  A records manager working with the different departments in their organization sets retention schedules (determining what to save, when to save it, how long to keep it, and what gets transferred to the archives and when and how it is to be accessed.)  Laws mandate some records retention. Examples are employee records or student records held by schools, birth and death records by municipal authorities, or tax and financial records of corporations. For a description of records management see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_management

An archivist generally handles collections of papers or photographs, maps, and even memorabilia donated by someone to a library or archive. Archivists can and do actively solicit donations from individuals whose papers meet their mission.  They are primarily responsible for the organization, accessibility, and preservation of all of those papers.  Generally an archivist is not responsible for the retention aspect of records keeping for an institution although sometimes they can be responsible for the housing of the papers of members of their institutional community, like professors of a college or the papers of the college president.

That said some archivists are the records managers for their institution especially for smaller organizations.  One thing that I would recommend for archivists who double as records managers is that you establish a clear set of policies for record retention for your institution.  You will need to meet with the different departments to determine what documentation they routinely keep, for how long, and where and how they keep it.  Together you can establish policies directing where and what and when to transfer those papers to your archive.  I’d also recommend establishing policies for the organization of the material to be transferred otherwise you will be sorting through boxes of unidentified photographs and notes like I have.  There are all sorts of examples of records management policies on line for various types of institutions.

What happens if you don’t?  One of the institutions that I work for was faced with just that challenge.  They had no set policies for retention.  So when one of the main buildings on campus was slated for renovation, several administrative departments brought boxes and boxes of papers and photographs to the library.  To make matters worse, one of the departments had one of its personnel retire.  Unfortunately that individual was one of those people who can’t throw anything away so…..  In her boxes of unorganized papers were receipts with the change for the purchase still attached, sticky notes of phone numbers of unidentified individuals, pencils, rulers – you name it.  In other words, filing cabinets and desks were simply dumped into boxes.  We got through it all, but it would have been be so much easier for all concerned if a clear institutionwide records management system was in place.

Typical messy box

Someone else told me another horror story. It concerns the papers of an important person who retired from an institution.  His staff, really trying to be helpful, scanned all of his documents and then shredded the originals along with the organizational structure of the files.  The scans were on one computer that had been retired, but retained.  No copies or back-ups were made to anyone’s knowledge.  Now that’s a scenario for disaster.  I have no idea how that turned out, but if the institution had policies of what and how to retain material the threat of loss could have been averted.  Scanning is fine, but there has to be a clear policy of how to name the files and what to save, in what format and with what backup. Otherwise technological changes will leave them inaccessible and lack of any file structure will severely limit their searchability.

I’m sure every archivist or records manager has similar stories.  You need a plan to which everyone agrees with clear steps for systemized organization.  Hopefully you can convince your organization to do that.  If you are just an individual with papers and digital files, you also need to have a plan for what to save and in what format to save it.  You should organize it in files to make it easier for you to find that one piece of paper you need, rather than have it lost in one of several paper stacks.  Everyone needs to be a records manager.