Since it appears that my copy and paste of the October 27th message
header was the problem in my earlier unsuccessful posting, I've cut it
out and am sending the rest of my posting (make that "essay."  Anyone
wanna guess how I came out on Myers Briggs ;-), LOL?)  I just want to
assure you all that it wasn't my choice of vocabulary that resulted in
the blocking, hahahaha.  Maarja

Bruce and Chris,

As I've said before, I don't view archivists and records manager as
being in competition. Maybe I've been lucky in working in uncommonly
professional environments, but in my view, neither the archival nor the
RM profession is diminished by the existence of the other. I say, live
and let live, both are peopled by professionals with the varying skills
and talents needed for their differing but related jobs. The public
and/or businesses depend on both!

I'll just ask one quick question. Since we are all records oriented,
can you provide me any validated, authoritative citations of archivists
who have written or said that they want to keep everything? That's a
new and novel concept for me. I've worked with many more archivists
than records managers in a career spanning 32 years Federal service,
and I've never heard of such a thing. I do not know a single archivist
who wants to keep everything. Is this just one of those running jokes
that runs through Recmgmt-L? Or am I missing something? I'm a little
concerned that RIM students lurking on the List might take the
assertion that archivists want to keep everything at face value when
you guys just are kidding.

All the archivists I know of absolutely accept the concept of records
management. Wander over to the Archives and Archivists Listserv if you
have time and you'll see that. I don't see archivists questioning the
value of RM or its practitioners.

Bruce, you wrote of archivists, "They appear to have the ability (or so
I have been told) of predicting what historians and other researchers
will be looking for, say 25 or 50 years from now." I've never seen
this. Archivists do many things: arranging records, screening records
for privacy and national security to determine what the public will
see, doing research in them, even publishing history books. But why
would archivists be required "to predict," since, at least with Federal
records, archivists deal with records that were adjudged to be
permanent BEFORE they reached the archives. Isn't that done through the
records retention schedules at the records creating agencies?

Permanent government records accessioned into an archives usually are
unaffected by research trends, they would be kept whether the
archivists thought 10 or 500 historians might want to look at them.
(Archivists working with manuscript and personal papers collections
might do some de-accessioning from time to time.) Archivists do
consider research trends in one area, deciding on priorities in
processing. They may first review and prepare for disclosure
collections with projected heavy reference usage, but that has nothing
to do with records management.

Of course, since they do research in--or work with those who
research--permanent records, archivists might well develop in-depth
knowledge about what information has longterm reserarch or historical
value in a business, academic or governmental setting.

Still, there seems to be more "prediction" involved in records
management, or, I should say, risk assessment and risk management
(considering what is likely to be needed long term and what can be
disposed of after a brief period.)

I've never worked in RM but I can tell it isn't easy. Some RMs work
with more controversial records than others, which I imagine can be a
real challenge. Can you picture being a records manager who was charged
with ensuring that records that tell the story of a controversial part
of national history, such as the Vietnam War, ended up in an archives?
Or an archivist, as I once was, whom the public relied on to get the
disclosable parts of the records released? Both RMs and archivists must
act with absolute integrity in such situations and I look on them as a
team.  I've always worked only in a governmental environment where
national memory depends on both parts of the team carrying out
responsibilities properly.   My perspective on corporate and academic
records management and archives obviously is very limited, just what
I've read.

Finally, the question that Leslie asked about university records sounds
more like a files management issue than a records management issue. I
didn't see Leslie use the term "dictate" in referring to the university
archives, I didn't apply it to her scenario myself, and I have to
assume that the term has cropped up in other postings for some reason
that escapes me (???) At any rate, I hope Leslie gets this resolved
easily and smoothly with no ruffled feathers anywhere on campus, LOL.
And that she feels comfortable posting future questions here, despite
our varying perspectives.

Maarja

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