Archivists and Records Managers, part 13

In the September/October 2018 issue of Information Management, William LeFevre wrote a piece entitled “Leveraging Legacy Historical Records to Create Organizational Value.”  He explained that the “data explosion” has blurred the lines between active and inactive records that typically divided records managers from archivists.  He encouraged information management professionals to consider additional uses of records beyond their typical administrative, fiscal, and legal uses, including:

• marketing and communications
• employee training and education
• strengthening corporate identity
• documenting mission and history
• data mining

He pointed to success stories from Coca-Cola and Ford to justify the retention of historical corporate records and suggested it may be appropriate to engage external appraisers (i.e., archivists) in identifying records.  He concluded,

“Telling stories through corporate records can enhance efforts to brand or rebrand, advance the organization’s mission, boost employee loyalty programs, enhance training efforts, and improve community outreach efforts, all of which will bolster the organization’s internal and external brand.”

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Archivists and Records Managers, part 12

With too many other things consuming time during RIM month, I took some time off from investigating the intersections between archivists and records managers.  But it’s time to return to this effort.

A few years ago, ARMA International Fellow David O. Stephens wrote an article in Information Management about the evolution and future of the records and information management (RIM) profession.  He delved into the transition for RIM professionals over the past decades from overseeing primarily paper records to primarily electronic records:

“they transitioned gradually from focusing on direct control over paper records to being largely concerned with policy planning, compliance monitoring, and other aspects of information governance (IG) across all media types, but especially on the predominant one – digital.”

He also recounted his appraisal of the business records from a closed copper mining company, lamenting that “these important paper records were preserved by accident rather than design; had they been electronic, they would have been lost to history.”

So it seems like the question for archivists, especially when it comes to electronic records of enduring value, is how to be a part of the policy planning as well as the discussions of creating file plans/document classification schemes/taxonomies for electronic records so that the records of today can be identified and preserved for future days.

Archivists and Records Managers, part 11

At the 1965 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, SAA Fellow and National Archives director Frank Evans delivered a paper about the relationship of archivists and records managers.  He recapped the literature of the previous two decades (much of which has already been cited in this series) and provided this conclusion about the intertwining roles of archival and records management work and the necessity of collaborating with allied professions:

“The interest of the archivist in records management is therefore not only legitimate—it is essential.  Conversely, it is the recognition and full acceptance of his responsibilities in these matters that distinguish the professional records manager.  Like the archivist he too is ultimately responsible to society at large and thus to posterity.

     “Regardless of the particular routes we may travel in our need for professional betterment, we share the common problems of the need for education, training, and closer relations with all of our colleagues in the fields of information and documentation.”

Archivists and Records Managers, part 10

Charles M. Dollar worked as the electronic records program manager for NARA from 1974-1994, and during this time, he delivered a number of lectures and papers that coalesced into an article published in the Fall 1993 issue of Archivaria entitled “Archivists and Records Managers in the Information Age.”  He put forward the simple argument that handling electronic records should force archivists and records managers to remember their common concerns — specifically, “records integrity, records disposition, and records accessibility” — and work together to create answers to the twists and turns electronic records created in their fields.  He identified the necessity of baking records appraisal and disposition into IT applications so that obsolete and irrelevant records are not migrated to new systems.  He concluded with a challenge for archivists and records managers not only to work together but also to expand their reach:

“It is not enough that archivists and records managers agree upon a joint agenda and talk about it.  There must also be aggressive activities that carry archivists and records managers into the main stream of the information management community.”

Archivists and Records Managers, part 9

Jay Atherton was a long-time archivist at the Public Archives of Canada.  In the Winter 1985-86 issue of Archivaria, he published “From Life Cycle to Continuum: Some Thoughts on the Records Management – Archives Relationship.”  Atherton emphasized the necessity of cooperative work between records managers and archivists to accomplish certain goals:

“- ensure the creation of the right records, containing the right information, in the right format;
– organize the records and analyze their content and significance to facilitate their availability;
– make them available promptly to those (administrators and researchers
alike) who have a right and a requirement to see them;
– systematically dispose of records that are no longer required; and
– protect and preserve the information for as long as it may be needed (if
necessary, forever).”

He concluded, “A symbiotic relationship between an archivist and a records manager should facilitate the achievement of these ends.  The intellectual training and historical perspective of the archivist will enrich the practical, immediate concerns of the records manager.  And the records manager’s knowledge of his institution, as well as his concern for efficiency, practicality, and immediate service, will help the archivist to perform his responsibilities.  Working as a team within the records management-archives continuum, they will ensure that their ultimate goals – administrative and cultural – are achieved.”

Archives*RM Testimonial #6

This testimonial about the intersections of archives and records management comes from Lori Eaton, Archivist at Found Archives, LLC.

At a meeting of foundation archivists in June 2019, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, spoke about the value he found in the margin notes past presidents had made on letters, reports, board materials and other documents preserved in the foundation’s archives. His comment has nagged me ever since.

I work as a consulting archivist helping foundation staff who are charged with managing how their organization is administered. Though they may have different job titles, these are typically the folks who create and update records management policies and retention schedules (or bring me in to help them with these tasks). In contemporary foundations, this means working with born-digital records.

Thanks to Mr. Walker’s comment, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the “margin notes” in digital systems. They’re photos of white board notes captured after a pivotal meeting and saved in a project folder, they’re comments in Google docs, they’re in the conversations that happen within project management tools like Asana or Basecamp.

How do I, with my records management hat on, ensure that these margin notes are represented without opening the flood gates to a plethora of non-records or duplication? How do I, with my archives hat on, ensure that the narrow stream of records preserved in the archives includes critical commentary and strategic thinking by key staff?

Knowing where to look for these digital margin notes, means that I must not only understand the kind of work my clients do, but also how they go about doing it. It also requires a generous definition of what constitutes a record with archival value.

Archives*RM Testimonial #5

This testimonial about the intersections of archives and records management comes from Elizabeth McGorty, Archivist & Records Manager for Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation.

I serve as Archivist & Records Manager for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC) which manages the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Yard was once a federal ship repair facility on the Brooklyn waterfront owned and operated by the US Navy. During WWII it was the largest industrial complex in New York state – a 300-acre facility employing 70,000 civilian workers repairing over 1,000 ships. In 1967 the site was purchased by the City of New York and was transformed into an industrial park. There are now over 300 tenant businesses in the sectors of manufacturing, design, and art.

I like to think of the Yard as a site with two lives, and this is certainly present in our special collections – comprising personal effects of former welders, carpenters, and electricians, and our flagship collection(s) which comprise architectural and engineering drawings of the site – nearly 3,000 linear feet in extent. The collection of drawings created by the Bureau of Yards and Docks (construction arm of the US Navy) date as early as 1806, when military residences were built, but also contain drawings of substations, railroad tracks, shops, and production utility buildings. The other collection of drawings is contemporary, all commissioned by BNYDC for maintenance repair, renovation, and development projects, dating from the 1970s.

Architectural drawings are considered both a corporate record (as defined by our policies) and material of archival value. Thus, it requires arrangement, description, digitization, and ingest into our DAM/public facing digital library at the item level. Item level processing was predicated on user value – recalling boxes of project records currently in retention does not serve staff, nor the needs of external consultants and contractors who need specific drawings for repair and tenant fit-out projects that occur after the construction project is completed. Project records are a series in the schedule, but the drawings from those projects are accessioned into the two aforementioned collections.

Managing our corporate records (two types with the same name: corporate records deemed permanent, AND records of the corporation in temporary retention) has helped me as archivist committed to, among other things, preserving BNYDC’s corporate legacy. It’s easy to see the intersection of RM and Archives because they are both functions of a singular process: the life cycle of information, and I see this in practice every day.

Archivists and Records Managers, part 8

In 2005, two people working in Records and Archives at the World Health Organisation — Ineke Deserno and Donna Kynaston — had this to say about the intersection of records management and archival work:

“A records management program is indispensable for an archives program.  It ensures

• the identification of records of long-term historical value and their orderly transfer to the archives
• the regular, orderly elimination of large amounts of records that have no long-term value beyond their administrative usefulness
• efficiency and economy in the management of the archives program by facilitating planning regarding space, records description, and records preservation”

They go on to explain,

“Effective records management programs ensure that records of permanent value that are transferred to the custody of an archives program in a regular, orderly fashion will be more readily accessible for reference use and will provide more reliable information for future users.  An effective records management program also ensures that records of no enduring value are not transferred to the archives simply as a means of disposing of them.”

[from “A Records Management Program that Works for Archives,” Information Management Journal (May/June 2005): 60-62]

Archivists and Records Managers, part 7

In his presidential address at the 1965 SAA annual meeting, W. Kaye Lamb spoke about “The Changing Role of the Archivist.”  He spoke at length about the importance of good records management, including this praise:

“Our debt to the records managers is very great, in at least two respects. In the first place, it is they who are bringing order out of chaos in the handling of official papers and who have made possible the systematic retirement of files from which archival collections have benefited immensely. If we look about us and note the archival institutions in which the collections of official records are sparse or almost nonexistent, we find almost invariably that those institutions are in States or Provinces where there is no adequate records management program. Adequate selection and preservation are byproducts of good records management. . . . In the second place, the records managers have been of great assistance in establishing the vital point that adequate archival and records services have practical value and can make it possible for a government to function both more efficiently and more cheaply. The old conception of the archives as being nothing more than a haven for antiquarians is passing. Officials and scholars alike are becoming accustomed to the fact that people in our searchrooms are as likely to be using records and papers only a few years—or even a few months—old as those dating back a century or more. A better appreciation of what the archives can offer has resulted in more generous financial support—a change we owe, in many instances, to the work of the records managers.”

Archivists and Records Managers, part 6

The fourth chapter in T.R. Schellenberg’s Modern Archives: Principles & Techniques (first published in 1956) is entitled “Archival Interests in Records Management.”  He approached the topic from the viewpoint of public records and had this to say about the intersections between records management and archival records:

“Public records are the grist of the archivist’s mill.  The quality of this grist is determined by the way records are produced while in current use, and by the way records are disposed of” (26).