Information, Records, and
the Philosophy of Speech Acts
introduction
Information is a prominent theme in 21st-century archival discourse. In English-
speaking countries, records professionals often affirm that distinctions between
information and records are increasingly blurred (Clarke, 2009, p. 121; Trombley,
2016, p. 50); many records managers, and some archivists, now use the words
'records' and 'information' almost interchangeably. According to British records
manager Steve Bailey (2008, p.59), 'any student of archives or records management
will tell you' that 'all records are information'. When the international standard for
records management (ISO15489-1:2016) defines a record as 'information created,
received and maintained by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal
obligations or in the transaction of business', it suggests that records are a kind, or
perhaps a subset, of information.
Another perspective sees information as the content of a record. For American writer
William Saffady (2011, p. 236), a record is 'an information-bearing object'; for
Frank Boles and Mark Greene (2001, p. 435), 'information is embedded in a record'.
Seen in this light, information is a commodity that can be captured and stored
within records, from which it can be retrieved when it is needed. Many practitioners
accept the view, commonly promoted in records management literature, that a
rigorous record-keeping programme can ensure that the contents of records are full
and accurate (Financial Conduct Authority, ca.2015, p. 1; Pember Cowan, 2009,
pp. 5-6; State Records New South Wales, 2004). Advocates of this view often
associate information with notions of fact. They affirm, or assume, that accurate
and complete factual information can be objectively captured in records, and that
- provided the records are well managed - the information held or set down in them
will then be transmitted unambiguously to users.
In the literature of the wider information field, information is sometimes described
as 'a collection of facts' (Stair, Moisiadis, Genrich, Reynolds, 2011, p. 6).
According to one textbook, information 'is not subjective or biased but factual
and impartial' (McGonigle Mastrian, 2012, p. 20). Comments such as these
presuppose a world in which information is context-independent and language can
be made to correspond to external realities. As Ciaran Trace (2016, p. 56) has noted,
the seemingly factual nature of information obtainable from organisational records
is often taken for granted by business-unit employees, as well as by records managers
and archivists. However, growing numbers of scholars have argued that information
is always a construction, and does not exist independently of the situations in
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