Paula Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I am finding that there is a significant disconnect in the realm of records
>management.

You're right there is a significant disconnect, but I must disagree that it's "in the realm of Records Management".  It's more ABOUT the REALM of Records Management.  Many in the IS/IT world seem to think they invented ILM, but fail to recognize that it's been around since the late-1970s, early-1980s in Records Management.

And the reason I think you're feeling that this disconnect exists is the plethora of publications (both paper and web based) being generated by the IT industry over the past 18 months dealing specifically with the concerns related to the issue of ILM.  The problem is, what THEY refer to as ILM is not what WE refer to as ILM.  Their definition is primarily based on access frequency and volumes of data, linked to chronological use patterns... and the ability to move data offline to save money based on infrequent access.

Ours on the other hand is based on managing the entire life of information, from creation/generation to disposition, either destruction or archival (which is ANOTHER trerm they don't seem to understand, but we'll save that for another rhetorical discussion =) ).  And while there are a WIDE RANGE of paper and web based journals and trade rags on the IT profession, there are many fewer on the RIM Profession... so you see their use of the term much more than ours.

Now you may have noticed that I use the acronym "RIM" rather than "RM"... and the reason for this is many of us have chosen to move forward into the field of Records and Information Management, and are addressing the issues related to electronic format records and information as well as paper based records and information.  And yes, I note that you also use RIM as the acronym for the profession. However, those of us that have don't feel that we're as impacted by the perceived disconnect.

>Not to develop a significant debate, but I was caught by the
>idea that there is Records Management, then there is Lifecycle management
>in a information management or technology sense.

As mentioned, what they refer to as Lifecycle Management (ILM) has nothing to do with the concept of "cradle to grave" managment of information... it's all about developing the mosr cost effective means of manging the massive amounts of data that they don't want to keep in an "on-line" environment, but would rather push off to "near-line" or "off-line" environments.

>When did RIM become so divorced from it's roots?

The bigger question is when did IT types decide they want have responsibility for managing information, when they're essentially technology enablers... they provide, maintain and manage the tools that provide access to the information.  They don't apply retention schedules to the tapes their systems generate aside from a rotation schedule for son, father, grandfather generations of tapes... and they don't segregate data on tapes/disk(c)s/optical platters or other media according to the retention period assigned to the data contained on the media, it's handled as one unified set with a common "retention" period, irrespsctive of content or record series.

>No particular need to answer this rather rhetorical question, but it seems
>that communicating RIM and what it entails is lost in the shuffle.

Actually, I don't see it as rhetorical, because there are many people that don't have a perspectiev of where the origins for Lifecycle Management were and may not reralize this is sort of a "turf battle".  It bears mentioning though that the concept of ILM came about before there were desktop PCs, about the only access the common worker had to a computer was through a VMS/CMS terminal to the mainframe, or maybe through a Wangwriter or IBM WordProcessor (yeah, you all remember those 8" floppy disks and having a "program stack" of Hollerith Cards, right??).

There was no "IT Industry", and there were no trade journals.... hecksakes, Al Gore hadn't even invented the Internet yet!!  =)

Larry

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