Full Sylabus in Adobe PDF format (236 KB)

PURPOSE OF COURSE

This course introduces the primary values, rationales, concepts, terminology, practices, techniques, and some professional issues in the disciplines of 1) records management (RM), 2) archives management, and 3) imaging technologies/systems within the larger, or umbrella, field of information management (IM).(1) This course will broaden the student's understanding of organizational/corporate information services, which are increasingly integrated under one functional/departmental area.

DEFINING THE FIELD

"Information management" is a term appropriated by virtually all the IM fields for their "exclusive" use. IM is more usefully and accurately defined, perhaps, by the following:

"[information management is the] application of management principles to the acquisition, organization, control, dissemination, and use of information relevant to the effective operation of organizations of all kinds. 'Information' here refers to all types of information of value, whether having their origin inside or outside the organization, including data resources, such as production data; records an files related, for example to the personnel function; market research data; and competitive intelligence from a wide range of sources. Information management [also] deals with the value, quality, ownership, use and security of information in the context of organizational performance."

Staff involved in IM, then, might include librarians, records managers, archivists, Management Information Systems (MIS) specialists/directors, and others. "Information management" doesn't mean "computer applications"; these are but one set of tools for the larger construct--a means, then, not an end. Not every information need is a computer application. Also, we should notice that there are differences implied here between the management of organizational information resources and the use of library materials for developing/expanding one's personal knowledge/education/cultural interests.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The origins of RM are much older than most in the field realize. In about 8000 B.C.E. in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley (present-day Iraq), pre-literate societies created "business" records using clay tokens made in a wide variety of geometric shapes to represent a range of traded commodities and craft goods in different quantities. This Neolithic system prevailed for several millennia, with increasingly complexity, until about 3500 B.C.E., when the better-known cuneiform system of writing on clay tablets emerged from the older system. (See the assigned reading by Duranti, below, for the subsequent developments.) Thus, the use of "business" or "corporate" recordkeeping precedes that for religious, political, literary, or other intellectual purposes.

For our more immediate needs, it is worth knowing that RM provides organizations of all types an approach rooted in the rise in the U.S. of "scientific management" (ca. 1880-1925) and administrative, or office, management (ca. 1915). The field of records management as we know it by that name arose during WW II at the U.S. National Archives and latter as a result of the two [Herbert] Hoover Commissions on the organization of the Executive Branch of the federal government (late '40s and early '50s). The use of records management techniques spread from the federal sector to business, industry, state governments, educational systems, and not-for-profit institutions as a means of managing information processing activities and achieving greater control over the organization's information resources.

SCOPE OF THE FIELD

In content, this type of information­"business records--is most often of an unpublished type, which is created internally and received from other organizations in various formats (e.g., letters, memoranda, policy documentation, printed forms, reports, invoices, personnel files, computer output microforms [COM], charters, licenses, etc). The interest of the Records Manager is not limited by type of media. The type of information of interest to RM, then, is largely unrelated to library materials (i.e. published, widely available). Likewise, RM's fundamental rationales are rooted in management concerns about productivity, effectiveness, and cost-efficiency while a public or academic library's rationales are more typically aligned with personal knowledge as well as social, humanistic, cultural, educational, and even aesthetic agenda, issues, and values.

The comprehensive records management program--a virtual necessity in large organizations--attempts to address the creation, distribution, use, retention, utilization, storage, retrieval, protection, preservation, and ultimate disposition of all records, regardless of the technology used to create them or the physical medium (paper, microfilm, optical disc, etc) that contains them. Only about 10% of U.S. business records are, in fact, digitized or microfilmed.(3) There is some irony, then, in that fact that most of the information R&D dollar in the U.S. goes to computer-based systems.

Basic I/RM objectives include:

(1) reduction of costs (e.g., labor, materials, equipment, supplies, and space) in handling, or processing, an organization's recorded information congruent with organizational goals and managerial effectiveness,

(2) development of cost-effective and efficient policies and procedures--including the qualities of being legally and technologically sound--for optimal creation, acquisition, storage, retrieval, duplication, dissemination, analysis, and disposition of information,

(3) creation and maintenance of practices which will best insure proper litigation support, and

(4) provision of information support and expertise in the selection and application of information technologies.

A mnemonic and useful--if informal--statement of purpose for IM/RM--and information management more generally--is: "getting the right information to the right person at the right time in the right order in the right format in the right amount at the lowest reasonable cost."

While the terms "archives" or "archival" are used rather loosely by the general public and the data management disciplines, they have a specific and traditional meaning in the professional circles of interest to us. Within the larger framework of an organization's records, archival records are those 3%-5% of the total body of an organization's records, created in the normal course of business, which are to be permanently retained for use because of their historical, legal, fiscal, or informational values.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

By term's end, each student should have:

1. Acquired an understanding of basic terminology, principles and practices as well as functional structures of RIM programs and an awareness of the types of institutions which practice this form of information management.

2. Acquired insight into the nature of the field in terms of the characteristics, activities, placement of its practitioners, and the professional concerns of the discipline.

3. Become aware of some of the principal information technologies and applications which support I/RM applications (e.g., source-document microfilming, engineering-drawing micrographics, computer-output-microfiche, computer-assisted retrieval (CAR) systems [computer dbms index plus microfilmed source documents], optical disc [a.k.a. "electronic imaging systems"], fax, E-mail, scanning technologies, dictation systems).

4. Using case problems, be able to apply principles and techniques of I/RM (one from each chapter of main text will discussed in class)

5. Observed records management/archives programs and had an opportunity to observe/talk with practitioners in order to better understand the specifics of practice in this field.

6. Using a case study problem, be able to integrate the principles of I/RM into a meaningful assessment of a I/RM problem and its solution (final examination).