Recordkeeping in the Production of Scientific Knowledge: An Ethnographic Study

Recent scholarship in archival studies has employed “non-traditional” modes of analysis to theorize the nature of the record and recordkeeping in organizational contexts. In that tradition, this paper discusses the author's use of ethnographic methodology to study recordkeeping in one academic research laboratory. The paper explores how ethnography contributes to our understanding of the laboratory as a recordkeeping organization and the intersections of scientific practice and the kinds of records scientists create and use. The paper calls for more analysis of recordkeeping as an information infrastructure and inquiry into the nature of the record in other kinds of knowledge production environments.     

Definitions of Electronic Records, the European Perspective

For the definition of electronic records, the use of new terms, like literary warrant, is not necessary, and for the European perspective even not understandable. If this expression simply means best practice and professional culture in recordkeeping, we only to know what creators did for centuries and still do today and probably will do also in the future, by referring to the archival science, diplomatics and archival practice for clarifying definitions in the recordkeeping environment. A multi-disciplinary approach is still required for the electronic recordkeeping system as it was in the past for traditional records, but the theory and the terminology should be consistent and based on the deep understanding of essential characteristics of records and essential requirements of good recordkeeping to produce in the first place and maintain reliable and authentic records. Of course, a record is more than recorded information created in the course of business activity: a record is the recorded representation of an act produced in a specific form – the form prescribed by the legal system – by a creator in the course of its activity.     

一种新范式：文件连续体理论的发展及应用

针对目前学界存在的对文件连续体理论的一些误读,本文系统梳理和阐释了文件连续体理论的核心概念、产生背景、主要内容及其应用,指出文件连续体理论是在澳大利亚基于证据和连续体的文件管理思想、文件系列体系思想的基础上,借鉴后保管主义及结构化理论建构的后现代主义文件保管的新范式。它强调文件并非是中立物,文件的运动具有时空延伸性。该理论的终极诉求是建立一个自下而上的、可靠的文件保存体系,以完整保存集体记忆,促进社会民主发展。要实现这一诉求,文件的保存就需多方主体的参与和合作。文件连续体理论为文件管理提供了重要的理论框架,对建构完整的社会记忆具有重要的指导价值,同时也为对传统档案学的核心概念及理论进行批判性反思提供新的视角和工具。     

回顾与前瞻:"十三五"档案学科发展调查和"十四五"档案学重点研究领域展望

“十三五”期间,我国档案学科在学科建设、人才培养、学术研究、服务社会、国际交流与合作等方面取得了长足进展,推出了丰富的研究成果,获得了新的更大的发展空间。但在档案学原创性基础理论研究、档案学研究平台、团队与基础设施建设方面仍较薄弱,学科影响力尚需进一步提升。“十四五”期间,我国档案学科仍将关注人文、管理和技术三大研究取向,更注重这三者的交叉与融合,重点对文件档案管理数字转型、档案记忆理论与数字记忆、档案与数字人文、档案社会化趋向与文件档案管理理论创新、文件档案治理、古文书与档案事业发展史、文献遗产保护与修复及档案学专业教育改革与发展等领域开展研究,开创开放、多元、创新的学科新局面。     

Continuous classification: capturing dynamic relationships among information resources

Records classification within electronic records management systems often is constrained by rules derived from paper-era recordkeeping, particularly the rule that one record can have only one file code??a rule that was developed to enable the management of records in aggregate. This paper calls for a transformation of recordkeeping and archival practice through an expanded definition of records classification and through item-level management of electronic records.     

On the crest of a wave: transforming the archival future

The profession of digital archivist is crystallising, fundamentally challenging traditional archival roles. The very nature of digital records also challenges the sustainability of archival systems and collections. Records that used to stay stable for decades in an analogue world now risk being lost or damaged within moments of creation. How should archivists react to these changes? Archivists have to lift ourselves out of our analogue environment and focus more effort on forging a new path, to reposition archives, archival institutions and archival practitioners more strategically for the future. To do this, archivists must resist the temptation to think that we and we alone – as people, as archivists or as today’s archivists as opposed to yesterday’s archivists – can come up with the ultimate solution to the world’s recordkeeping problems. Archivists must keep innovating, absolutely. But we also need to be agile and flexible, remembering that anything we come up with today will be superseded at some point in the future – increasingly, in the very near future. Archivists need to forge links with archives, systems and people in order to come up with approaches to records and archives care that remain usable now and flexible well into the future.     

Multi-Method Interdisciplinary Research In Archival Science: The Case of Recordkeeping, Ethics And Law

This article describes the issues involved in using a multi-method approach to address multi-faceted interdisciplinary research in archival science. The example chosen to illustrate the multi-method approach is taken from recent research, which explored the recordkeeping-ethics-law nexus from the perspective of communities as social systems, regulatory models for recordkeeping and their continuing application to online records. The methods combined traditional archival and social science research techniques, as well as legal and ethics research tools drawn from law and moral philosophy, together with disciplinary discourse analysis, concept mapping and empirical examples to illustrate the concepts. The example demonstrates that complex research questions that cross disciplinary boundaries need to draw from a number of research paradigms and conceptual understandings, which assist in breaking down the barriers with knowledge domains that have to date, had limited contact with archival science.     

Monk,knight or artist? the archivist as a straddler of a paradigm

The contextual approach gives the impression that we are moving into the 21st century with three competing scientific traditions of interpretation. Another understanding is the systemic view, which indicates a paradigm with complementing traditions of interpretation, depending on ontological level. The paradigm of archival science is, like that of many other sciences, influenced by positivism, systems theory and hermeneutics. The relevance of the paradigm depends on personal beliefs. The hermeneutic understanding of archival science emphasizes the context and deconstructs central concepts. Hermeneutics emphasizes the influence of conceptual changes and technological advances on perception. Hermeneutics stresses the need for a socio-cultural and historical orientation of archival science. The positivistic tradition is coloured by the myths about an ideal science. This is reflected firstly in the analogy comparing archives with nature, and secondly in the deductive method. Positivism is instrumental in its demands for distinct definitions of concepts and its insistence on the record as the basis of archival science. The flexibility of systems theory highlights the complex relations between context and record. Systems theory can, at its best, serve as a meeting-place for researchers, archivists and users and accordingly form the basis for new knowledge and theory formation. Systems theory enables a materialistic/dialectic epistemology based in reality and inspired by other relevant sciences. The result may be the foundation of a systemic-functionalist archival science with activities, records creation and evidential values in focus.     

So much to learn, so little time to learn it: North American archival education programs in the information age and the role for certificate programs

Archivists in North America have described, discussed, and debated the necessary and optimal content, configuration, and venue for archival education for close to a century but have given little consideration to integrating technology within archival curricula. Increasingly, archivists are faced with a high tech world in which they must understand issues including information systems, the nature of electronic records and databases, record migration, digitization, and web design and creation for provision of access. This paper explores the nature and extent of information technology and information science coursework and knowledge discussed in the Society of American Archivists’ Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies and that students have available to them while in archival programs. It concludes with a proposal for Library and Information Science education programs that prepare archivists to explore developing Certificate of Advanced Studies programs in archival management on top of master’s degrees to allow for additional information science coursework.     

The Archival Bond

This paper presents the concept of archival bond as formulated by archival science and used in a research project carried out at the University of British Columbia, entitled The Preservation of Electronic Records. Being one of the essential components of the record, the concept of archival bond is discussed in the context of the traditional diplomatic and archival definitions of records, and its function in demonstrating the reliability and authenticity of records is shown. The most serious challenge with which we are confronted is to make explicit and preserve intact over the long term the archival bond between electronic and non electronic records belonging in the same aggregations.     

Crunch time: the revised ISO 15489 and the future of recordkeeping

The revised International Standard ISO 15489:2016 Part 1: Principles and Concepts establishes a framework and a set of techniques with which today’s recordkeeping professionals can implement appropriate and digital-ready strategies for recordkeeping. Moving away from conventions that remained tied to the paper world, the Standard establishes a set of principles to guide any approach, regardless of technologies and formats, and explains the fundamentally important work of appraisal. It also describes the essential elements of controls for records, to assist with access, retention and more. In this reflection, the author describes the genesis of the revised standard and argues that, unless recordkeeping professionals embrace the contingent and fluid nature of their work, and adhere to principles such as those described in the Standard, they will not produce solutions to accountability, access and memory challenges that meet the needs of the connected world.     

Research Issues in Australian Approaches to Policy Development

Drawing on his experience at the Australian Archives in policy development on electronic records and recordkeeping for the Australian Federal Government sector the author argues for greater emphasis on the implementation side of electronic records management. The author questions whether more research is a priority over implementation. The author also argues that if archival institutions wish to be taken seriously by their clients they need to pay greater attention to getting their own organisations in order. He suggests the way to do this is by improving internal recordkeeping practices and systems and developing a resource and skills base suitable for the delivery of electronic recordkeeping policies and services to clients.     

基于证据视角的社交媒体档案管理——以微信为例

社交媒体档案是信息时代一种新的记录类型。本文将档案学与法学相关理论结合起来,基于证据视角,以微信为例,简要分析了社交媒体档案的特点,择其要点解读了《关于办理刑事案件收集提取和审查判断电子数据若干问题的规定》对社交媒体档案作为法律证据的要求,并在此基础上总结出社交媒体档案管理应该关注的几个问题。     

Is it a question of trust or why are we afraid to go to Nineveh?

Trust is an overused concept in our contemporary world. This paper explores the complex relationship of trust, efficiency, accountability, transparency and responsibility and their relationship to recordkeeping in our globalizing culture. It focuses on the profound changes that have taken place in the meaning and practice of audit within neo-liberal societies and how the ??rituals of verification?? and the ??managerialism?? may pervert the resulting record. It challenges the unthinking use of much of the rhetoric surrounding these concepts by archivists to justify their existence. It reflects on why the archival voice often remains silent or at best goes unheard in much of the discussion about these questions that have profound consequences for democratic societies. It is easy to lay the blame at the door of a perceived breakdown of trust rather than to consider whether the root of the problem lies with archivists and records managers themselves. This paper draws on my experience in directing the Information Management and Preservation MSC programme at the University of Glasgow and wide and serendipitous reading, which has sometimes been brought to my notice by students.     

What is recorded is never simply ‘what happened’: Record keeping in modern organizational culture

Traditional premises in archival theory and practice hold that archival records are authentic as to procedure and impartial as to creation because they are created as a means for, and as a by-product of, action, and not for the sake of posterity. Such Positivist assumptions about the nature of records have come under sustained scrutiny in the archival literature over the past decade. The post-Positivist view of records embraces the record as a socially constructed and maintained entity. This paper situates itself within this new paradigm in an exploration of the beginning of the life of the record. It is therefore concerned with the creator (or recorder) and the social construction of the record. In expanding beyond a purely administrative- and juridical-based theory of records, this paper draws upon research from other disciplines, such as sociology, in order to place records and record keeping within a framework that allows for an understanding of their social nature. In particular, the goal is to determine the underlying social factors that directly influence and shape the creation and keeping of records and to begin to understand how these factors manifest themselves in the construction of the record.     

Archival science and postmodernism: new formulations for old concepts

Process rather than product, becoming rather than being, dynamic rather than static, context rather than text, reflecting time and place rather than universal absolutes—these have become the postmodern watchwords for analyzing and understanding science, society, organizations, and business activity, among others. They should likewise become the watchwords for archival science in the new century, and thus the foundation for a new conceptual paradigm for the profession. Postmodernism is not the only reason for reformulating the main precepts of archival science. Significant changes in the purpose of archives as institutions and the nature of records are other factors which, combined with postmodern insights, form the basis of the new perception of archives as documents, institutions, and profession in society. This essay explores the nature of postmodernism and archival science, and suggest links between the two. It outlines two broad changes in archival thinking that underpin the archival paradigm shift, before suggesting new formulations for most traditional archival concepts.     

Archival science and postmodernism: new formulations for old concepts

Process rather than product, becoming rather than being, dynamicrather than static, context rather than text, reflecting time andplace rather than universal absolutes – these have become thepostmodern watchwords for analyzing and understanding science,society, organizations, and business activity, among others. Theyshould likewise become the watchwords for archival science in thenew century, and thus the foundation for a new conceptual paradigmfor the profession. Postmodernism is not the only reason for reformulatingthe main precepts of archival science. Significant changes in thepurpose of archives as institutions and the nature of records areother factors which, combined with postmodern insights, form thebasis of the new perception of archives as documents, institutions,and profession in society.This essay explores the nature of postmodernism and archival science,and suggest links between the two. It outlines two broad changes inarchival thinking that underpin the archival paradigm shift, beforesuggesting new formulations for most traditional archival concepts.