We are enjoying the thread/discussion at UCSD as well.  While this is
stepping away from the concept of records management as defining the
actual lifecycle of the information, we might consider:

I believe that Writing has been preserved through conversion and
migration for more than 4,000 years.  Writing is one of the earliest
professions...not the earliest, but one of the earliest professions. 

I am somewhat puzzled by the concept of keeping records only so long as
the media is viable.  There are those documents and data that we might
like to have access to, for a period longer than the life of the person
or action they pertain too.

Paula Johnson, CRM
UC San Diego
P&RA

   
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Stephen Cohen
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 11:59 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [RM] NOW Permanent 300 years/WAS: Records Management Myths?

I'm loving this thread/discussion! What is truly permanent and what does

it truly mean to preserve a record eternally. {Be warned: the 2nd and
3rd 
paragraphs are a bit of a ramble of thoughts that have been percolating
in 
my noggin for some years. I just had to let it out.]

Like Larry, I too don't but into the 300 year concept. There are scads
of 
documents well over 300 years old that are legible and possess value. 
America's founding documents come to mind right away, but as we know 
they're not yet 300. Gutenberg's Bibles and the Magna Carta are over 300

years and still in pretty good shape. The Dead Sea Scrolls are over 2000

years old. Everything at some point ceases to exist. Nothing is forever,

even if it gets classified as permanent. At some point, everything we 
create loses its purpose and meaning. As archival records, it is our
duty 
to try to preserve them as best possible for as long as is possible and 
sensible.

This thread reminds me of a conversation I had in college after my art 
history class with some classmates. I think it was when we had just been

lectured on early Renaissance art and how there were just a handful of 
"artists" crating work in a natural style (as opposed to the formalist 
Byzantine style). We transferred the  Renaissance art scene to present
day 
and concluded that most artists were pretty lousy, unknown and poorly 
marketed. Even if they were good or great, without the right patrons, 
their work ended up in the dung heap with the lousy stuff, or maybe a 
single artifact lives on, anonymously, because all other documentation
on 
the artist no longer exists.  In a setting where patronizing the arts
was 
encouraged, not everyone could pony up the cash to hire Palladio, 
Michelangelo or Botticelli; patrons of lesser standing had to settle for

the likes of Stefano Cohen to paint a family portrait or design a home, 
which went on to get obliterated from a war or earthquake. Let me circle

back to my point: Nothing is forever and what we do manage to retain are

just pieces of a whole. We'll never know what it was like to live in 
Florence or Siena or Ravenna. Yes there are records and artifacts, but 
they're just pieces of a larger story which can only be strung together 
with human imagination and reason.

When the World Trade Towers crashed down, millions of dollars of art
went 
with it, including a massive Picasso tapestry that was in the lobby. I 
remember that day clearly. I was working at Yale University then and
went 
out to the street, as did just about everyone else, since we didn't know

what target was next. Standing outside the library on Wall Street I 
thought about what would happen if the Library, and the Beinecke Rare
Book 
Library across the street got blown up next. How would the world of 
research and history be different. I concluded that while it would be 
devastating, in the long term (100+ years), the loss of that knowledge 
from civilization would be marginal at best.


Stephen Cohen, Records Manager
MetLife \ Legal Affairs
1095 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY  10036-6796
212-578-2373
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