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At the northeast corner of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., there sits a marble statue, The Future, designed by sculptor Robert Aitken in 1935. The phrase inscribed on its base, though, seems dichotomous if not contradictory: "What is past is prologue." Taken from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, which was written ca. 1610, the phrase may be understood today to mean that history sets the context for the present and informs the future; the experience of the past is a harbinger of what is to come.
Though any serious study of history reveals that it does not repeat itself, similar patterns do recur. In the context of business recordkeeping and the professional practice of records and information management (RIM), this article identifies past patterns and what they portend for the future of the profession.
From Paper to E-records
When I began my career in 1969, RIM was about exercising direct custody over physical records in file rooms and records centers. The only available technology was microfilm. The underlying principles and practices of the discipline were, by today's standards, relatively simple, even primitive.
Unbeknownst to me (a young, eager, and inexperienced professional), my chosen field was on the cusp of change. Within a few short years, business records were no longer only physical objects that could be touched by the hand and read by the human eye; they included electronic records.
These new records possessed characteristics never seen in the paper world: a much shorter life expectancy but greater strategic value, rates of growth, retention challenges, accessibility, regulatory compliance challenges, litigation risks, consequences of loss, and preservation challenges.
As I write this in the twilight of my career, organizational recordkeeping is in the latter stages of a long transition from visible media to computer-based recordkeeping. Despite the length of time it is taking, this transition has been truly epochal. This article is about the evolution of RIM that has led to today's challenges and opportunities - and what they...