More About Record Managers

           I know I said that I would write about temperature and relative humidity and I will, but not quite yet.  First I want to comment on a note I received from a reader regarding records managers and archivists.  The writer apparently works for a records management storage company in Kentucky.  This is the website - http://www.kentuckyunderground.com/document_imaging.html  The comment was that records management "is not just about long-term storage, but rather end-to-end management of information from creation, operational usage, and storage to final disposition,"  Well said.  Their company apparently scans or preserves information digitally for its clients.  Digital preservation is, of course, the way of the future for most entities.  I don’t know anything about this particular company, but I do know that unless you have a strong IT department it is hard to keep up with the rapid changes in the technology necessary for long-term storage of records or preservation of archival collections.  The entities that I work for are considering farming out their digital preservation and accessibility tasks to a larger university just because of that.  Migration of material from one update to another or one program to another can be a real headache.  It’s very time consuming, often frustrating, and sometimes very expensive.  Without a good and extensive IT department it becomes a nightmare. Whether to do something in house or not must be up to the archives or library and will be determined by the support they have from their institution. Large institutions perhaps can handle the demands better than smaller ones.

Anyway records managers manage records from beginning to end by working with the records creators.  What I said was the following: “ 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 do more than just maintenance.   Good records managers work closely with records creators to develop criteria or standards for record creation and usage throughout the life of those records.  That is one of the ways that record managers differ from archivists.  Archivists are usually not involved with collection creation or original usage although they ideally have the opportunity to work with donors in determining which records will eventually come to the archives.  Unfortunately the ideal doesn’t always happen.

Most of the good records management systems can be found in government record keeping. Corporations and large universities also have policies.  Most smaller universities or at least the ones where I have worked have not yet developed record management systems beyond the creation and storage of records required by law – employee records, student records, and so forth.  In the institutions that I know most about little or nothing has been standardized for the various university departments.  One of the individuals I work with swears that her university administration’s approach to record keeping and management is to periodically clean out files and store the information in the basement.  When the basement floods, as it always does, they get to throw it all away. The library staff has tried to institute policies or at least talk about records management, but so far the administration has showed little interest.  While the flooding approach is one option, perhaps policies would be better in the long run. In my opinion they need a good records manager. 

Anyway thanks John for the information about your firm and for the better wording.