Many thanks for your thoughtful, excellent comments!  You present the
issues very well, indeed.

I think part of the problem here lies in the fact that the records
management community is very diverse.  An environment that serves some
organizations well actually may hurt other types of organizations.  And
vice versa.

Those RMs who work with archivists, or who have themselves worked as
archivists or historical researchers, probably have more of a sense of
what is lost if records are managed improperly.  They probably feel a
stewardship obligation more strongly, or differently, than those who
don't.

Someone who never has to face the consequences of a knowledge gap, or
rarely reads history books on their personal time, is likely to have a
different view.  What is not kept probably will never hurt them.  And it
is easy not to care about something that does not affect one's ability
to do one's work, or get promoted, or whatever.  If you never have to
draw conclusions from available evidence, or work with managers to avoid
mistakes, then what is or is not kept permanently is unlikely to affect
your job.  You may be able to get away with screening out that component
to a large extent.

Also, private sector record keeping doesn't have the same public
accountability component that government record keeping has.  I'm
thinking of what NARA describes in
http://www.archives.gov/records_management/publications/documenting_your_public_service.html

And there can be a push in the private sector to keep as little as
possible, for a number of reasons.  I remember hearing about a business
history professor lamenting in a newspaper article in the late 1980s
that "lawyers are the enemies of history."  Don't get me wrong, I'm not
saying records managers are the enemies of history.  But clearly some of
them see themselves more as allies of archivists and historians than
others do!  For those of you who do see yourselves as our allies, my
heartfelt thanks!

Maarja

>>> [log in to unmask] 4/6/2005 11:50:46 AM >>>
The thread on annotations has been interesting. I'm somewhat shocked,
however, at the lack of consideration by some on this list for one of
the key aspects of setting retention periods. For many, if not most of
us (and particularly those of us in the private sector), the records
manager is also the de facto archivist of the organization. Our
archival brethren have often knocked us for being gung-ho records
destroyers, and sadly, I'm afraid that is true for many folks.

I was always taught to appraise records based upon the legal,
administrative, fiscal / audit, and HISTORICAL value of the record.
Granted, very few records ever have the historical value, but there
are
truly times where we must look at that aspect of the record.

While the Haldemann annotation may be an extreme example (as this was
a
historical figure commenting about another historical figure), that
annotation was very telling. While it did not direct anyone to do
anything (often a primary consideration of whether or not an
annotation
makes the document a new record), it is a telling comment. Once upon a
time, I worked for the Archdiocese of Chicago. The late John Cardinal
Cody was a very controlling manager of the Archdiocese. That is
evident
in the fact that most correspondence to the Archdiocese crossed his
desk and he would annotate the document and give direction to whatever
subordinate needed to handle the issue. Without those annotations, it
would be difficult to make the statement that Cardinal Cody was a
controlling manager.

I think that in every organization there is a level of leadership
where
the records manager really must look at the historical value of the
documents -- and look at how people work. In many organizations, the
people at the top do not work from PCs or email. They still dictate
letters and oftentime mark up letters by hand.

Our responsibility cannot solely be to abide by the legal minimum
retention periods and work to dispose of records as quickly as
possible
without consideration to the corporate memory of the organization.
There are times where we have to appraise the historical value of a
record and set the retention period accordingly. Anotehr example: I
also worked for a large financial services company. When the records
program started, we had numerous boxes of miscellaneous records that
had been stashed in the "dead storage" room. Over time, we whittled
down the pile of records and found the correct record series and
retention for most of the material. One of the boxes that I came
across
had the project files for a failed venture in Japan. Now normally,
that
sort of project matter might have a fairly short retention period,
assuming that there are no fiscal or audit issues in there. As I
reviewed the contents of the box, I discovered that there was also a
very considerable set of documentation of what we would call "lessons
learned". As I reviewed that material, it occured to me that this
information would be valuable in the future if the company ever wanted
to go down that path again -- at bare minimum, it would provide some
guidance for what they had done, what worked, what didn't, and what
they would want to consider doing differently. That has value to an
organization -- assuming that someone would think to look for such
things. But we all undoubtedly have had those sorts of wild goose
chases in our records center -- some muckety-muck calls down and is
looking for some obscure bit of information. It is really important.
But they have no idea how it was filed. Sometimes, we perform
miracles;
sometimes not.

One of the promises of knowledge management was the ability to "push"
these sorts of gems of information out there where people could find
it. I'm not sure that has happened as well as it was promised.

At the end of the day, then, I'd like to suggest that we all have a
more open mind about the potential for some records to have historical
value. That doesn't mean keep everything scrap of paper that the CEO
has blown his nose on.

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