putting in place storage and migration strategies that carry records beyond
the life of an organisation or a person
developing access strategies that manage access across jurisdictions.
When we're thinking in third dimensional ways, we're concerned with:
identifying personal and corporate requirements for essential evidence to
function as personal/corporate memory
establishing recordkeeping regimes in the personal or corporate domain
developing organisational knowledge bases and classification schemes that
represent the personal and corporate contexts of recordkeeping
putting in place storage and migration strategies that carry records through
the life of an organisation or a person
developing access strategies that manage access according to the rules of a
particular personal or corporate domain.
In the first and second dimensions, processes and systems are established in
accordance with the regimes set up in the third and fourth dimensions, and
informed by their concerns.
In the second dimension, recordkeeping processes and systems are implemented
in accordance with the design requirements, standards and best practice models
set up in the third and fourth dimensions. Implemented processes and systems:
capture records at specified points in business processes
(when predetermined 'boundaries' are crossed)
capture and maintain the metadata required to assure their quality as records
of business and social activity (i.e. metadata that places them in relation to
other records and links them to their context of activity), and to manage
their useability (completeness, accuracy and reliability) and accessibility
through time
deliver records for use through time according to relevant access permissions,
and user views
store and secure records through time.
In the first dimension, acts, communications and decisions are documented.
Document creation and control processes are implemented which:
capture content
capture structure (documentary form)
order and place documents in their immediate context of action and
facilitate their retrieval
store documents and provide for their security.
Integrated recordkeeping responsibilities
Fulfilling organisational needs for records is what used to be called the 'primary'
use of records. Once the primary use of records as evidence for organisational
purposes has ceased, institutions have traditionally been seen to be interested in
them as evidence of the institution itself-collective memory. This interest repre
sents what used to be called the 'secondary' use of records. This way of looking at
issues associated with corporate and collective memory is linked to the life cycle
concept.
The Records Continuum model supports a distinction between collective and
organisational memory. In the records continuum, societal needs are charac
terised as fourth dimension issues, whereas organisational needs are associated
with the third dimension. However, unlike life cycle formulations that suggest
that records in the early stages of their lives serve organisational memory purpo
ses, and later come to serve collective memory purposes, the Records Continuum
model embraces the view that records function simultaneously as organisational
and collective memory from the time of their creation. The organisation has a
particular interest in the way they function as corporate memory (a third
dimension perspective); while societal interests relate to the way they function
as collective memory (a fourth dimension perspective).
Definitions of the role of records managers and archivists associated with
life cycle and 'the three ages of archives' thinking suggest that records managers
are concerned with corporate memory, while archivists are concerned with
collective memory. This is not the philosophical position taken by continuum
thinkers. They see the recordkeeping profession as being concerned with the
multiple purposes of records. They take current, regulatory and historical
perspectives on recordkeeping simultaneously not sequentially. As Chris Hurley
has remarked about historical recordkeeping perspectives:
What electronic recordkeeping has forced us to confront is that archival
methods must be applied throughout the life of the record. No new problems
arise as records age. All of the technical issues involved in keeping electronic
records arise at the moment of their creation. An agency has to have an
archival program in place in order to keep electronic records for any length of
time -be it a second or a millennium.
According to the continuum view, the role of recordkeeping professionals relates
to setting up recordkeeping regimes that can ensure that from their
creation, records are managed in ways that enable them to fulfil their multiple
purposes contemporaneously and over time. Setting up such regimes involves
integrating records and archives competencies and responsibilities.
A continuum of responsibility:
building partnerships in the past, present and future
Recordkeeping professionals need to build partnerships with a broad range of
stakeholders in order to achieve their continuum-based objectives. The Records
Continuum model can be used to stimulate ideas about building partnerships
with players who operate in the different dimensions, eg:
DE PROFESSIE
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SUE MCKEMMISH YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
Building partnerships
4D Pluralise
cultural heritage players
sociologists
historiographers
other information professionals, eg librarians
IT shapers
law makers
other standard setters and regulatory authorities
watchdogs
the public
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