Managing Electronic Records*
Rick Barry
www.mybestdocs.com www.openreader.org
Abstract
Purpose – This article aims to review the book Managing Electronic Records edited by
Julie McLeod and Catherine Hare, Facet Publishing,
Design/Methodology/Approach – The book is evaluated in the context of other
related titles, the authors' and editors' aim for the text, the needs of
professionals in the field and the reviewer's views on required content.
Findings – The reviewer concludes that the book is
one of the very best collections on electronic records to have been published.
Originality/value – The article reviews this book within the
context of other titles, thereby informing readers on the broader range of
resources in this challenging area.
Keywords – Electronic records, Records management, Ethics,
Standards, Digital storage, Preservation, Implementation, Case studies
Paper type – Literature review
* This paper is a pre-publication version of a
paper that was published in the Records Management Journal, Vol.
16, No. 1, 2006; Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bradford, UK, pp. 57-66, and is published
here with the kind permission of the publisher.
* * * * * * * * * *
About
Managing Electronic Records
The Washington
Post has used a catchy promotional slogan: "If you don't get it, you
don't get it." It is not much of an exaggeration to borrow this as an
aphorism to describe Managing Electronic
Records ("this book") McLeod
and Hare's (Eds.) with a bevy of first-class, highly-experienced, chapter
authors whose names will be familiar to most professionals who keep up
internationally in the field of electronic records management. It is one of the
very best collections and presentations on electronic records that I've seen
put together. It is an important one to talk about. It is apparent from reading
this book that the editors designed
it to lead us to that conclusion. It happened for good reasons.
No book is without some weak spots. I will
mention a few along the way. However, the bottom line is that this book is a
'get-er,' 'save-er' 'consume-er' and, in some ways, even a 'model-er' for
future books on the subject as the inevitable forces of change cause us to
revisit newer and better ways to manage electronic records. Let's talk about
the book in terms of its content, context and structure, which ought to be a
familiar and comfortable way for ARM professionals to think about it.
Content
How the
book stacks up against the editors' vision for it may not be the most important
approach, but it is probably the fairest. From a marketing point of view,
taking the readership perspective may be the most important. The trick, of
course, is for authors to sufficiently well understand the marketplace that
their vision and delivery for the book captures and addresses market needs. I'll
mention some topics that I consider important in managing electronic records,
but those should be considered principally as provocations for discussion and
for future writers rather than criticisms of this book. (If I were so smart,
why didn't I write the book myself?) I therefore prefer to devote most time on
the editors' and readers perspectives.
What did the editors set out to do? In their
own words, in the book's Preface, they took as for their challenge the
proposition: "managing electronic records involves multiple roles, an
extensive range of aspects covering the organizational, technical and legal
issues, and ongoing exploration and investigation to achieve and share greater
effectiveness and efficiency. To be successful, these all have to come together
in holistic solutions, at the strategic and operational levels." In their wrap in the final chapter, they
further elaborate these challenges:
In the last chapter, the editors turn authors
and provide an excellent cross-walk between the individual chapters using a strategic-tactical-operational
construct. They also inform us on topics not easily considered in that
construct—ethics and R&D—and show how these elements are needed to complete
the framework needed to play the long-game and win at it. Finally, they speak to
futures.
The editors did broadly fulfill their promise
as complex and multi-dimensional as the vision for the book was described. This
was in no small way because of the tying up in the final chapter. At the same
time, the chapters are so rich in content and so well written that the book
would be a keeper simply as a collection of winning essays on electronic
records.
What would likely readers expect? How do I know this? I don't, but I will postulate and hopefully stimulate further discussion by touching on two ways for thinking about this that may lead to conclusions about how readers will set their own expectations for this book—a) a sampling of other books with similar titles on the broad aspects of managing electronic records; and b) an indicative list of findings that recently have been identified and published in a U.S. federal interagency study on barriers to effective electronic records and the findings of a survey of U.S. and international users' attitudes about that study.
A
few of the recent offerings on electronic record include: Effective
Approaches for Managing Electronic Records and Archives,
Bruce W. Dearstyne, Ed., 2002; Managing
Electronic Records, 3rd Ed., by
William Saffady, 2002; Thirty Years of Electronic Records, by Bruce I. Ambacher, 2003; Records Management: Planning for the Electronic Records Archives Has
Improved, by
Linda D. Koonz, 2004; and, 'fast-backwarding',
Managing Electronic Records: Issues
and Guidelines, 1990, one of the first international, interdisciplinary
studies of this subject, produced by the UN Technical Panel on Electronic
Records (1987-1989), which I had the honor of chairing and which gave me my own
baptism of fire in electronic records. Anyone who has read one or more of these
books may come to this one with the expectation of finding similar coverage.
Hopefully they will also be looking for this book to fill in gaps in their
earlier readings. I think they will discover that it does add some valuable new
information, especially in the areas of human factors and organizational
culture (Laeven, Fuzeau, Ellis); stakeholder building (An, Ellis); digital
preservation (Marciano and Moore, Hofman, Ryan); standards (Hofman, Cumming, An);
legal matters (Stephens, Ryan); R&D (An, Ryan; ethics and societal issues
(Harris) and most especially post-implementation lessons learned from installed
electronic records systems (Fuzeau, Ellis). Excellent
overarching presentations that cover several of these topics are presented in
McDonald's introductory chapter and Laeven's "Competencies" chapter.
Of course, they were interwoven and related to one another by McLeod and Hare
in the final chapter.
One example of an external view
to consider what readers might consider important and thus might look for in a
book on this subject may be found in a recent survey I conducted on barriers to
effective electronic records that was produced by the Electronic Records Policy
Working Group (ERPWG) an interagency group in the
One might infer that these are not only seen as issues, but
that readers would like to know more than they are barriers. Why are they
barriers, and what can be done to overcome them? On most of these accounts,
this book hits the mark with at least identification of the issue if not
remedial suggestions. It is noteworthy that several of these concerns emerged
as issues in the brilliantly done case studies, reinforcing their importance.
Architecture
In the area of architecture, more is needed in our
professional literature. In the first chapter, McDonald speaks to "records
architecture" independently but preferably as integral to a broader
enterprise information management and IT architecture. I'm not so sure of the value
of an independent records architecture, but certainly records management must
be tightly integrated into the enterprise information and IT architecture to
make for the implementation of a complete, effective and efficient electronic
records system. Trying to deal with records independently may operate in the
other direction. In the last chapter, McLeod and Hare stress the importance of
architecture and infrastructure at the tactical level. If those chapters
constitute the bread in this meal, there is little on architecture in the
sandwich between the slices. Exceptions to this appear, if obliquely, in
Cumming's discussion of metadata and business processes and in Ryan's
observation that the digital preservation function needs to be linked to the
strategic business aims of the organization. Indeed it does, as do other key
recordkeeping functions, not the least of which is electronic records capture.
Architecture is about tightly knitting organizational assets, especially
information and technology, to business processes—most especially where
business processes are automated. We need to generate literature that more
rigorously addresses architecture on three kinds and levels: enterprise
architecture, information architecture and technology architecture and how
recordkeeping fits in. Leading recent books in the area of information
architecture don't mention technology architecture and vice versa. Neither
mentions recordkeeping as a service within the architectures. Yet all relate to
an enterprise model or architecture.
Standards for Auditing and Compliance
The issue of standards for incorporating recordkeeping
compliance into the audit process was considered crucial by 79% of the
above-mentioned survey. Hofman devotes a welcomed section to this subject in his
discussion of compliance, but much more is needed as increasingly tight laws
and regulations that govern various business sectors (finance, pharmaceuticals,
food, personal-health information, etc.) that may be national in their origin
but are global in their impact since they apply to any organization wishing to
do business in such countries. These events require recordkeeping to be seen in
the context of special laws and regulations. Global companies failing to take
account of such requirements in all countries where they wish to operate do so
at considerable risk.
Implementation
There are few organizations that have implemented electronic records systems, and fewer references to them in books and even fewer appearances of the term "implementation" in indexes. This book stands out in this respect. With two outstanding chapters (10 (Fuzeau) and 11 (Ellis)) devoted to implementation case studies, two others, chapters (2 (Hofman) and 3 (Cumming)), with additional insights in major sections on implementation and another citation on the term in the index, there are some 29 pages citing the term at some level in the index.
Ethics (and Society)
Another salutary contribution of this book is
its inclusion of ethics at the chapter level. As noted earlier, the 'long-game'
vision the editors had included "vision and leadership, awareness and
understanding, the environment and architecture, technical solutions, people
issues and the things to be done." For the Harris chapter on ethics, I
would submit "people and societal
issues, as in fact the editors note as one of Harris' key messages. It is not
only true in this case, but Harris' discussion is an important addition to a
book that is not specifically on the subject of ethics and societal issues.
Ethical and societal issues are subjects typically missing in ARM
practice-oriented books, professional conferences and course outlines that
aren't dedicated to ethics and society. Not everyone who goes for
practice-based books on ARM in general or electronic records in particular is
going to go for books focusing on ethics or society. Many may not readily see
the relationship of ethics to ARM or electronic records. Moreover, ARM
professionals tend to take the societal impact of what they do for granted or
to be presumed as important and look at such issues and cases primarily from a
personal perspective to the exclusion of broader societal perspectives.
According to a "Report on the Society and Archives Survey"
(by this author), most ARM professionals see a near total lack of
understanding on the part of society of the importance of recordkeeping and the
special demands of electronic records. Thus, where the subject is treated
alongside other aspects of recordkeeping in more than a passing manner, as it
certainly is by Harris in this book, it deserves to be noted.
As
for topics I would be looking for in a book with this title, most of them are
there, including the case studies, Hofman's presentation on standards and
Marciano and
Bottom Line
Does Managing Electronic Records deliver what one might expect from the title? In the main it does, and better than others in many ways.
Context
The editors do an excellent job bringing out the relationship of chapters to one another and to their strategy-tactics-operations construct. They also make the chapter links to major cross-cutting electronic records issue areas such as standards, leadership, stakeholder building, and business systems analysis. I believe McDonald is the only other author who makes reference to other chapters in his presentation. ARM professionals should be good at context, beyond talking about metadata and archival description. One might hope for more contextual linking within chapters to others, but that may be asking too much in light of the difficulties of orchestrating the editing of a book like this.
The editors make another excellent contextual
observation when they speak to the use of language in the book when, in the
Preface, they talk about the differences in the use of such fundamental terms
as "recordkeeping" and "records management." In
Structure (aka, user friendliness)
ARM professionals place more importance on document structure than most people. It is regarded as an essential feature of records. For some of the same reasons, and more, structure is a most important feature of professional and technical books. It may not be as important as their content, but it is in the sense that it is what makes their content usable and hopefully useful. This is because such books are not typically read in serial form from beginning to end, as most novels are. They may be scanned that way to give professionals a good idea of their scope and coverage, but mainly for future reference purposes. However, a principal use of such books is as reference resources. Someone wants to focus in a particular work, teaching or research situation on metadata, or preservation, or standards, or case examples of these things. They want to be able to pick up the books they know address their topic and find quite specific information in a timely manner without reading the whole thing from beginning to end again. The book's structure allows them to do that—well or poorly. It provides what we might call navigation or finding aids and more generally its user friendliness. We know it when it is missing or poorly provided.
Elements of structure that authors may employ to help make their books as user friendly as possible include: table of contents, (high-level or detailed); chapter groupings under super-group headings or parts, an index, footnotes, a bibliography or reference list, and a study guide. A book may have many or all of these things and still not succeed in achieving, as a whole, a generally user friendly product; because it is possible and not uncommon for these things to be done poorly.
Particularly because the mapping of chapters in this book is mainly addressed in the final chapter, it would have been helpful for the table of contents to attempt to group chapters according to their place in the strategic-tactical-operational framework with the R&D and Ethics chapters as peers to those framework sections. It wouldn't be perfect because of the cross-cutting nature of some of the chapters, but it might help the reader to make a decision to buy and read or not.
Index:
The index of a book that is going to be used for quick reference is a very important aspect of book structures its own right. It is even more important with an unstructured TOC such as this book has. This makes it a critical component of the book's success or lack thereof. Yet, index creation is often done by the publisher with little input from authors. When the index is not up to par, it is very evident to the reader. This book does about par with its index in very simple terms of the ratio of index pages to substantive pages expressed as a percentage. Using this measure, its index ratio is 7:193 or about 3.6%. This compares on par with Kahn and Blair's Information Nation Warrior: Information Management Compliance (2005), 8:220 or 3.6%; and more favorably with Dearstyne's Effective Approaches for Managing Electronic Records and Archives (2002), 2:160 or 1.3%. It compares less favorably with Cox and Wallace's Archives and the Public Good (2002), 14: 317 or 4.4%. Contrasting from another field, Thomas Erl's Service-Oriented-Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design (2005), has a ratio of 34:713 or 5%, and that book has a 16-page, four-tiered, highly structured TOC that makes it easy to find things. That book was written by one author, even with research inputs from others; but it is clear that the author devoted a considerable amount of time and thought to the TOC and index.
I observed numerous occasions where topics were
covered in the text but not in the index. For example the term
"architecture" appears once in the index but in at least five places
in the text that I observed. Similarly, Harris speaks to many subjects other
than ethics, but suffers in the index with 20 references classified in two
index terms: "ethics" and "
Citations and Bibliographies
The editors and other authors provide a rich set of references cited in the chapter texts. The editors offer a very innovative approach in providing URL references in the book that I have not observed before. To save readers having to retype the Website addresses quoted in the text, a complete list of URLs is available on a companion website to the book.
The idea is exceptionally good and provides a considerable service for readers and an innovative integration of print and Web media. It will become an even greater and more useful innovation if the editors make arrangements to regularly test the URLs to ensure that the links remain hot and to update them when they change or disappear. It might be wise to place this page on a university or other Website. I do not have experience with Facet Publishing but, from experience with other publishers, I know that their own pages are subject to unannounced URL changes and page deletions.
For the best reading experience, recognizing
that many will not read this book in a single sitting—I didn't say it was like
a
While there is much gnashing of teeth about the low priority, low resourcing and low status of the ARM functions in organizations, there is little ownership of why that is so. Much of it is due to the fact that professionals in the ARM field have been singularly unsuccessful in communicating adequately to their own executives about what they do and its importance. Too much is said about "the mandate" for ARM and too little about the business case for it. This book offers some excellent communications that could be effectively used as a short-term way of addressing that problem. My guess is that if executives read even the Preface and Chapter 12, they would soon find themselves doing some non-linear dipping into the other chapters. They might even steal themselves ultimately to read the whole book given that one of its other attractions is that it comes in under 200 pages—quite an achievement in itself for the level and quality of content it contains.
Endnote
[1] As Hofman noted, an ISO Portable Document Format-Archives (PDF/A) standard was in preparation at the time of writing of this book. It has now been published as ISO-19005-1. Information on the open standard, OpenReader, may be found on the OpenReader Consortium, of which the reviewer is a cofounder.