This testimonial about the intersections of archives and records management comes from Kris Kobialka (Kobi), Archivist and Institutional Records Manager at Boston Architectural College.
In my current position, I was hired mainly to build and run a records management program and to use whatever small amount of time I had left over on Archives. The Archival holdings at that point were no more than 6 c.f. total in volume. I went about the business of interviewing folks in the offices about their current records and as they got used to having me around, I began to hear: “What about these older things from my predecessor?” That was my cue to begin “helping” folks with their older files, by which I mean evaluating their older materials for inclusion in the Archives. Today I have a very robust Archives and Records Management program and we have grown the Archives to 300+ c.f. including large format early architectural student work, College publications, administrative history, and board minutes. It’s all there! But initially it was all broadly distributed throughout the institution. I am very glad that people know to contact me when records are “discovered” and our Archival reference statistics, at nearly 500 reference requests per year, are also a good yardstick for success.
If you’d like to share your own testimonial, please reach out to us at saarecordsmanagement@gmail.com.
The Schedule 