Records continuum model

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Louise Spiteri School of Information management [email protected] Records Continuum Model CNSA 2012 Conference

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Transcript of Records continuum model

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Louise SpiteriSchool of Information [email protected]

Records Continuum Model

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Recordkeeping

Recordkeeping is a process involving both record management and archival management. Records are:

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Recordkeeping Theory

In traditional recordkeeping theory, records have different values:

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Definition of Record

• ISO 15489: “Information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in transaction of business.”

• The evidential value of a record can exist only if the content, structure, and context are preserved. The context is the link between different records that belong together and also to the process where the record was created.

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The Records Life Cycle: History

The Records Life Cycle Model was conceived by Phillip Coolidge Brooks and Emmett J. Leahy of US National Archives in the late 1930s and further developed by Ira Penn.

Based on the concept that a record has a life similar to that of a biological organism:

It is born (creation phase) It lives (maintenance and use phase) It dies (disposition phase

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Linear Concept of the Life Cycle ModelThe initial model postulated that the record life cycle is linear and sequential

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Circular Life Cycle ModelToday, the life cycle model is considered continuous and circular, as demonstrated by this representation from Library and Archives Canada. Note, however, that each stage is separate.

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/007/002/007002-2012-e.html

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Underlying Premise of the Life Cycle Model

The life cycle model is based on the idea that records become less important as time passes.

Active or Current records: Used regularly and frequently in day-to-day work of the organization. Semi-active: Not in use as frequently as current records, but must be kept for legal or operational reasons to be retained. Required for compliance with procedural, statutory, or financial requirements.Inactive Records: Records no longer required for the work of the organization. Subject to appraisal procedures for final disposition

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Demarcated Phases in the Life Cycle Model

The life cycle model is divided between the records management and archival phases

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Records Management Phase

Creation or receipt of information in the form of records

Classification of the records or their information in some logical system

Maintenance and use of the records

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Archival Management Phase

Selection/acquisition of the records by an archives

Description of the records in inventories and finding aids

Preservation of the records

Reference and use of the information by researchers and scholars.

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Stages in the Life Cycle Model, 1

Creation and Capture of Official Records (RM)The first phase of the Records Life Cycle involves records being

created, collected or received through the daily transactions of the agency that detail the functions, policies, decisions or procedures of the agency.

Records should be captured to ensure that they are accessible to all who require them, subject to any restrictions that may apply, and managed in accordance with policy and procedures secured against tampering, unauthorized access or unlawful deletion, and disposed of promptly in accordance with legal authority.

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Stages in the Life Cycle Model, 2

Organization, Maintenance & Use (RM)This can include filing, retrieving, use, duplication, printing,

dissemination, release or exchange of the information in the record. This stage is managed by records managers.

Management of official records includes the following:Standards and procedures for classifying, indexing, labeling, and filing the records and information to ensure their ready access and retrievability for the conduct of the agency's business;Establishing and documenting file locations; andStandardized procedures for retrieval and refiling of records and information.

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Stages in the Life Cycle Model, 3

Disposition (RM)At the disposition phase, records are assessed to determine their

retention value using records retention and disposal schedules. This leads to either the preservation or destruction of the record. This stage is managed by records managers.

Permanent records are those records that have enduring historical or other value and will never be destroyed. When records are determined to be of permanent value they need to be transferred to archival storage.

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Stages in the Life Cycle Model, 4

Preservation (archival management)

Archival records are protected for the use of present and future generations.

Different measures are taken to minimize the risk of loss of records and to slow down, as much as possible, the processes of physical or virtual deterioration which affect most archive materials.

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Value of the Life Cycle Model

The life cycle model has been seen as an effective to manage records:

Without this model, vast quantities of inactive records clog up expensive office space and servers, making it difficult to retrieve important administrative, financial and legal information.

Without a model that controls records through the earlier phases of their lifecycle, those of archival value cannot be identified and preserved.

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Demarcation of Roles

The life cycle approach draws a clear demarcation the functions of the records manager and the archivist.

The division of activities into records management and archival phases, with the consequent division of responsibility between the records manager and the archivist could be seen as artificial and restrictive.

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Concerns with this Demarcation, 1

In 1958 Ian Maclean, the Australian National Archivist, toured North American and European archival institutions looking for best practices and suitable patterns for structuring archival services.

Maclean concluded that records managers were the true archivists, and that archival science should be directed toward studying:

the characteristics of records materials,the past and present recordkeeping systems, andthe classification problems associated with these.

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Concerns with this Demarcation, 2

At the 1985 meeting of the Association of Canadian Archivists, Jay Atherton questioned the logic of the linear sequence of the life cycle model:

Is the management of current records the first stage in the administration of archives?Is the continuing preservation of valuable records the last step in records management?Does the archivist have no role to play in serving the creator of the records, in determining disposal periods, or developing classification systems? Does the records manager have no responsibility in identifying permanently valuable records or serving researchers?

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Concerns with this Demarcation, 3

Atherton postulated that all stages of records are interrelated, forming a continuum in which both records managers and archivists are involved, to varying degrees, in the ongoing management of recorded information.

As they progress through their life cycle, records experience a series of recurring and reverberating activities within both archives and records management. The underlying unifying or linking factor in the continuum is the service function to the creators and all users

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Symbiotic Record Manager/Archivist Relationship

Effective management of recorded information requires ongoing cooperative interaction between the records manager and the archivist to:

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 who have a right and a requirement to see them;Systematically dispose of records that are no longer required; andProtect and preserve the information for as long as it may be needed.

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Records Continuum Model

The model was developed in the 1990s by Frank Upward, senior lecturer in the School of Information Management and Systems at Monash University in Melbourne,who was influenced heavily by Jay Atherton’s theories about the relationship between records management and archivists.

The records continuum is a consistent and coherent regime of management processes from the time of the creation of records (and before creation, in the design of recordkeeping systems) through to the preservation and use of records as archives.

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Upward’s Underlying Principles

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Records are used for transactional, evidentiary, and memory purposes, and should be handled by a unified approaches to archiving/recordkeeping, regardless of retention periods.

Records as logical rather than physical entities, regardless of whether they are in paper or electronic form.

The recordkeeping profession needs to integrate recordkeeping into business and societal processes and purposes.

Archival science is the foundation for organizing knowledge about recordkeeping.

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The role of Recordkeeping in the Continuum Model

To facilitate governance.

To facilitate corporate, social, cultural, and historical accountability.

To capture corporate and collective memory, especially insofar as records capture experiential knowledge.

To provide evidence of both personal and collective identity.

To provide value-added information that can be exploited as assets, with new records being created in the process.

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Contributions of the Continuum Model

The model brings together records managers and archivists under an integrated recordkeeping framework with a common goal: to guarantee the reliability, authenticity, and completeness of records.

The model provides common understanding, consistent standards, unified best practice criteria, and interdisciplinary approaches in recordkeeping and archiving processes.

The model provides sustainable recordkeeping to connect the past to the present and the present to the future.

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Records Continuum Model

http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/rcrg/publications/frank-u-rmj-2001.pdf CNSA 2012 Conference

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Dimension 1: Creation

Involves:a creator(s)the transaction in which they take part, of which a document is a resultthe document itself (with or without archival characteristics)the trace (or representation) of that transaction embodied in the document.

The model identifies accountable acts and creates reliable evidence of such acts by capturing records of related/supporting transactions. Records of business activities are created as part of business communication processes within the organization.

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Dimension 2: Capture

Involves: the personal and corporate recordkeeping systems that capture documents to support their function as evidence of the social and business activities of the units responsible for the activities

Records that have been created or received in an organization are tagged with metadata, including how they link to other records. With characteristics from the second dimension, records, now attest to evidence of action and can be distributed, accessed and understood by others involved in undertaking business activities

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Dimension 3: Organize

Involves: investing the record with explicit elements needed to ensure that the record is available over time.

Records become part of a formal system of storage and retrieval that constitutes the organization's corporate memory.

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Dimension 4: Pluralize

Involves:The broader social, legal, and regulatory environments in which records operate

Records required for purposes of societal accountability become part of wider archival systems that comprise records from a range of organizations.

Ensures that records can be reviewed, accessed, and analyzed beyond the agency for social, legal, and cultural accountability for as long as they are required.

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Axes, 1

The recordkeeping axis represents the state of the record and is the closest axis to the traditional Life Cycle model, as it follows a record from creation to description, then to organization, and then to incorporation in a general body of information.

As a record moves out to each stage, it does not lose the previous quality; an individual record within the cultural memory is still a document that has been created.

The axis is still about context rather than about the passage of time.

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Axes, 2

The identity axis indicates what entity that record is associated with.

The transactional axis is concerned with the use of that record.

The evidence axis is about the record’s state as evidence.

A record may be involved in any of the axes, depending on when it is considered, and in what context.

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Benefits of the Continuum Model, 1

The Model’s primary focus is the multiple purposes of records.

Its goal is the development of recordkeeping systems that capture, manage, and maintain records with sound evidential characteristics for as long as the records are of value to the organization, any successor, or society.

It promotes the integration of recordkeeping into the organization’s business systems and processes.

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Benefits of the Continuum Model, 2

Instead of being reactive, managing records after they have been created, recordkeeping becomes proactive.

In partnership with other stakeholders, identify records of activities that need to be retained, then implement business systems designed with built-in recordkeeping capability, to ensure that records of evidential quality are captured as they are created.

With appropriate metadata to ensure that they are accurate, complete, reliable, and usable, these records have the necessary attributes of content, context, and structure to act as evidence of business activity.

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Integration of records management and archiving

By focusing on:similarities rather than differencesqualities and quantities of records rather than quantities alonecohesive ways of thinking of records rather than disparate or passive waysintegrated policy making rather than fragmented frameworksintegrated control of policy implementation rather than separate controlintegrated rather than disparate approaches to problem solvingmeeting customers' needs through collaboration rather than by duplication and overlap

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Archivists in the Continuum

The traditional role of archivists posits that their work begins once records enter the archival repository, i.e., at the end of their life cycle.

The records continuum removes the distinction of records in use and records in their archival (dead) state, since records are used in their archival phase.

The records continuum allows archivists to intervene in the creation stage of records to ensure their reliability and authenticity over time and space. This requires knowledge of the activities that give rise to the creation of records with evidential properties. Archivists must be able to indicate which artefacts are, in fact, records.

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Model Aspect

Life Cycle Continuum

Origins • evolved from the need to effectively control and manage physical records after World War II

• evolving from the more demanding need to exercise control and management over electronic records for digital era

Elements of recordsdefinition

• physical entity • content• context• structure

Major concernsin recordsmanagement

• records-centered, product-driven

• focus on records as tangible physical entities

• the physical existence of records themselves

• purpose-centered, process- and• customer-driven• focus on the nature of the records,

the recordkeeping process, the behaviours and relationships of records in certain environments

Records movementpatterns

• time-based: records pass through stages

• time sequence: records processes take place in a given sequence

• multi-dimensional: records exist in space/time not space and time

• simultaneity: records processes can happen at any point in the record’s existence.

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Model Aspect

Life Cycle Continuum

Recordkeepingperspectives

• exclusive• single purpose• organizational or collective

memory• current or historical value

• inclusive• multiple purposes• can be organizational and

collective memory• can have current, regulatory, and

historical value from the time of creation simultaneously not sequentially

Time of archivalappraisal

• end of records movement • from beginning to end

Role of recordsprofessional

• passive and reactive• locked into custodial role and

strategies

Proactive post-custodians:•recordkeeping policy makers•standard setters•designers of recordkeeping systems and implementation strategies

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Conclusions, 1

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Conclusions, 2

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Bibliography

Atherton, J. ( 1985). From life cycle to continuum. Some thoughts on the records management- archives relationship. Archivaria, 21, 43-51.

Flynn, S. J. A. (2001). The records continuum model in context and its Implications for archivalpractice. Journal of the Society of Archivists, 22 (1), 79-93.

Government of South Australia. (2011). Records life cycle. Retrieved from http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/rmp/pages/cg0000941/lifecycle/?reFlag=1

International Standards Organization. (2001). ISO15489-1. Information and documentation and records management part 1: General . International Standards Organization, Geneva.

McKemmish, S. (1997). Yesterday, today and tomorrow: A continuum of responsibility. Retrieved from http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/rcrg/publications/recordscontinuum-smckp2.html#fig1

Northwest Territories. (2002). The life cycle of records. Records Management Bulletin, 6.

Upward. F. (1996). Structuring the records continuum - part one: Postcustodial principles and properties . Retrieved from http://infotech.monash.edu/research/groups/rcrg/publications/recordscontinuum-fupp1.html

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