Glenn's effigy is being burnt at the altar of the great archive and 
records god at this very moment by National Archives (and academic) 
people.

But to the point. Both Miranda and Glenn make the valid point that 
trying to explain the concept of a continuum model to the business 
users is probably a waste of time (my spin of course). That is also my 
experience as unless you are in an organisation with a healthy culture 
of managing records - where people are concerned with the record now 
and into the  future - you are pretty much on a hiding to nothing (hey 
if you are in such an organisation I envy you).

As Shepherd and Yeo note in their book "Managing Records: a handbook of 
principles and practices" the two models are not incompatible. The 
objection to the life-cycle model being that it reflects an 
underdeveloped view of records management and deals to specifically 
with practical detail - this later being what most of your business 
users of the system will be interested in though.

Use the model (both) in your work for your planning and implementation 
of your recordkeeping system. Build a system that is mostly hidden from 
the user. That is build a system where they have to do the minimum 
input to the recordkeeping side but get the maximum benefit out of 
having a recordkeeping system available for their use over time and you 
will be close to perfection as you can be.


If only it were so simple (if it were the IT guys would have flogged it 
off to us by now)


John Dowling
Records Manager
Federal Government
Australia

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