which it is produced (Cornelius, 2014, p. 190; Gitelman, 2013, pp. 2-3). From this perspective, claims that information can be objectively accurate and impartial are misguided attempts to conceal its contingent role. Arguments of this kind call into question many of the ideas voiced in records management literature, about information, accuracy, and the relevance of these notions to an understanding of records and their contents. In addressing these issues, this essay explores connections between records and information, and examines how a number of other theoretical perspectives (notably the philosophy of speech acts) can enhance our comprehension of records and their functioning. It considers how notions of 'information' might relate to a view of record-making and record-keeping that takes account of speech act philosophy, and it concludes that records have social as much as informational roles. Distortion, error, and conscious production Medical records offer a useful starting-point. Despite the recognised importance of careful record-keeping in the medical sphere, studies of the content of medical records have revealed numerous inadvertent mistakes made by clinicians hastily entering details of diagnosis or treatment (Bowman, 2013; Lloyd Rissing, 1985). But many distortions have been found to occur for other reasons. When clinicians record what their patients have told them, cultural or organisational pressures often come into play and lead them to condense the patients' words into formal professional narratives. Although records ostensibly report what patients said, the patients' vocabulary is converted into that of the clinician, and 'what little of patients' voices appears in those reports appears only on the health professionals' authority' (Poirier, 1999, p. 34; cf. Berg, 1996, pp. 505-507). The potential for accidental error, ambiguity, or deliberate misrepresentation can never be excluded. Similar constraints are apparent outside the medical world. Investigations of social work case files have shown that they frequently document tasks, goals, and their accomplishment, but cannot capture the everyday complexity of the personal lives that prescribe and determine them (Floersch, 2000, p. 179). Other researchers have reported that files created by parole officers cannot fully reflect the behaviour of parolees and often give undue emphasis to incidents that support officers' desired outcomes (McCleary, 1977). In many organisations, minutes of meetings tend to capture only formal aspects of a meeting and omit controversial or politically sensitive aspects (Whittaker, Laban, Tucker, 2006, pp. 104-106; Winsor, 1999, pp. 218-219). Some commentators affirm that records such as these are created by those in positions of power and remain largely silent about matters their creators prefer to overlook (Thomas, Fowler, Johnson, 2017); others argue that lived experience can never be adequately reduced to mere textuality (Floersch, 2000, pp. 169-170; Lynch, 1993, p. 287). Many studies have indicated that record-making practices are often directed at minimising any trace of digressions from formal procedures or showing the creators of records in the best possible light. Workers compiling timesheet records may seek to demonstrate compliance with official accounting rules rather than recording the precise hours they actually worked (Brown, 2001). An ambassador's dispatches may be worded to give an exaggerated sense of achievement or to conform with the expectations of the government at home (Tosh, 2015, p. 107). Even if we set aside the most blatant examples of deceit, such as the falsification of police records discussed by John Van Maanen and Brian Pentland (1994, pp. 73-75), it is clear that the self-interest of record creators and their desire to operate successfully within bureaucratic cultures often leads them to construct records in ways that are intended to create particular impressions or advance particular points of view. Much of the early work that points in this direction was undertaken in social science disciplines. As long ago as 1980, social scientists Nancy Cochran, Andrew Gordon, and Merton Krause concluded that, although 'the commonly accepted understanding is that records preserve information about the incidence of events', records are 'proactive rather than simply descriptive' and are preceded and shaped by the plans, goals, intentions, and assumptions of their creators (1980, pp. 5-6). Archival scholars did not generally come to share this view until rather later (and it is a view still rarely acknowledged in the practice-focused literature of records management). Awareness that records 'are not neutral, factual, [but] are designed to produce an effect in some kind of audience' (Van Maanen Pentland, 1994, p. 53) reached archival scholarship with the postmodern 'turn' in the archival literature of the 1990s. Terry Cook was among the first archivists to acknowledge that all records are conscious products. When we encounter records or archives, he said, we can be beguiled into assuming that they convey neutral data or information (Cook, 1994, p. 319), but behind the record lies the record-maker and the contexts of activity in which the record was produced, and 'archivists want to know not just what was communicated, but when, by whom, to whom, where, how, [and] why' (1994, pp. 302, 312). At the start of the new millennium, Cook (2001, p. 25) linked these ideas to a postmodern view of records, when he characterised archival postmodernism 'as focussing on the context behind the content; on the power relationships that shape the documentary heritage; and on business-process conventions as being more important than informational content'. Diplomatic scholarship Of course, it is not only archivists sympathetic to postmodernism who emphasise process and activity. Instead of simply associating records with information, writers engaging with archival science have often stressed that records 'are inextricably connected with activity' (Eastwood, 2017, p. 16), although they have not always agreed what that connection might be or how it might operate. Many archivists, particularly in countries whose legal traditions are those of Roman-influenced civil law, have believed that explanations of the connections between records and activity can be discovered within the discipline of diplomatic scholarship. This discipline, built on the work of the 17th-century monk Jean Mabillon, is known as 'diplomatic' in Europe and as 'diplomatics' in North America. It seeks to define objective means of assessing the authenticity of documents that have legal consequences, particularly charters, diplomas, and other documents that attest to the granting of rights. Over time, legislative systems have archives in liquid times 94 geoffrey yeo information, records, and the philosophy of speech acts 95

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