Edward Ratcliffe presented this paper at the SfNP Summer Seminar:
As a Records Manager, one question I regularly get asked is “why would you want to do that?” The obvious answer is “because records management is cool,” but then I would say that.
There are lots of routes into records management – commonly this may be through completing a postgraduate course. But it could also be a step sideways from a similar professional role, such as an Archive role, a Library role or another IG profession. Or it could also be a role that’s thrust upon someone already in the company after a specific project for a company; an IT systems integration, a filing project, an audit, or anything else. In short, there is no one way to become a records manager.
Different approaches into the profession mean that there are many differing approaches to the profession. One approach I personally do is assess what the organisation currently has, what it might need, and what the organisation’s overall aims are. For example, if Company Z has a business aim to increase its communication with customers, a recordkeeping priority may be to review all guidance and communication the RM team provides and update these to be more accessible.
The other big question is where does RM sit in the organisation? A large part of your time will be spent working with people who may or may not know about recordkeeping. In my experience, organisations that have some people that understand a little bit, but don’t have a fixed recordkeeping professional in some form suffer from having little to no communication.
Ideas spread like rumours, growing and evolving into all sort of wonderful and frightening “rules” such as “we need to keep this just in case,” “I need to print this,” “I’ll create several copies and spread them all over the system,” “I should delete this.” It is now thought that a lot of these rumours originate from the most terrifying creature imaginable, native to many places, and destroyer of worlds:
Squirrels are angry predators, very keen to keep hold of records/nuts in preparation for wintertimes. And then during dark nights suddenly remember they are hungry for information/food, but disastrously forget exactly where they buried their feast.
Sometimes, squirrels move out of woodland areas and invade an organisation. Proudly declaring that if they don’t keep this exact nut “just in case” then the business continuity (or continuity of hibernation) will suffer.
Forced analogies aside, how do we encourage people to keep only the records they need to? How do we advise of storing information in the correct system, with the right access? And how do we advise senior management on how good IG helps the business
Well, there are common skills any recordkeeper would say are critical to their role. Broadly, these fall into Communication and Systems Management
Systems Management is managing both the recordkeeping capabilities within IT systems and also the managing of the overall policies and processes of a recordkeeping function.
How we write these policies and how we make sure the business understands them falls under the Communication skills. We want to make sure anything we put out there is easy to understand and accessible. But we also want to make sure we provide Training or Guidance, or may want to build up networks within an organisation to cascade information. Communication is key.
But there are always going to be different approaches to RM, depending on who the records manager is, their background and the organisation they work for. There is no “right” approach to managing records – it does boil down to what approach you think would work at this time. The skill is knowing what approach is needed at the moment, and being prepared to adapt your approach if you need to.
Will any of this change in the future? There are a number of movements that could change the Information Landscape. Technological changes such as Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence and increasing use of Blockchain, as well as concerns for how organisations impact on the environment and a need to move to Net Zero probably means there will be more different approaches for records managers to consider. How we embrace these changes and make them work to capture the right records into new systems will need to be considered by us as these systems are designed and implemented. The benefits of records management will remain the same – and could become more prescient as organisations develop processes and policies to reduce waste: only keeping what we need to keep is a core purpose of good records management, so selling the benefits of a retention schedule will be paramount. But whatever the future holds, the key concern will remain of how we communicate just how cool records management is.
The New Archivist 