Content deleted Content added
Pru.mitchell (talk | contribs) Importing Wikidata short description: "Abstract conceptual model used in archival science" |
|||
| (35 intermediate revisions by 12 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Short description|Abstract conceptual model used in archival science}}
[[File:The_Records_Continuum_Model.gif|thumb|right|The
The '''Records Continuum Model''' (RCM) was created in the 1990s by [[Monash University]] academic [[Frank Upward]] with input from colleagues [[Sue McKemmish]] and Livia Iacovino as a response to evolving discussions about the challenges of managing digital records and archives in the discipline of [[Archival science|Archival Science]].<ref name="elis">{{cite book |last1=McKemmish |first1=S. |last2=Upward |first2=F. H. |last3=Reed |first3=B. |year=2010 |chapter=Records Continuum Model |title=Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences |edition=3rd |pages=4447–8 |url=http://doi.org/10.1081/E-ELIS3-120043719 }}</ref> The RCM was first published in Upward’s 1996 paper "Structuring the Records Continuum – Part One: Postcustodial principles and properties".<ref name="upward1">{{cite journal |last=Upward |first=F. |year=1996 |title=Structuring the records continuum – part one: postcustodial principles and properties |journal=Archives & Manuscripts |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=268–285 |url=http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/research/groups/rcrg/publications/recordscontinuum-fupp1.html }}</ref> Upward describes the RCM within the broad context of a [[continuum (measurement)|continuum]] where activities and interactions transform documents into records, evidence and memory that are used for multiple purposes over time. Upward places the RCM within a post-custodial, [[Postmodern philosophy|postmodern]] and [[Structuration theory|structuration]] conceptual framework.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Upward |first=F. |year=1997 |title=Structuring the records continuum – part two: structuration theory and recordkeeping |journal=Archives and Manuscripts |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=10–35 }}</ref> Australian academics and practitioners continue to explore, develop and extend the RCM and records continuum theory, along with international collaborators, via the Records Continuum Research Group (RCRG) at Monash University.▼
The '''records continuum model''' (RCM) is an abstract conceptual model that helps to understand and explore recordkeeping activities. It was created in the 1990s by [[Monash University]] academic Frank Upward with input from colleagues [[Sue McKemmish]] and Livia Iacovino as a response to evolving discussions about the challenges of managing digital records and archives in the discipline of [[archival science]].<ref name="elis">{{cite book |last1=McKemmish |first1=S. |last2=Upward |first2=F. H. |last3=Reed |first3=B. |year=2010 |chapter=Records Continuum Model |title=Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences |edition=3rd |pages=4447–8 |doi=10.1081/E-ELIS3-120043719 |isbn=978-0-8493-9712-7 }}</ref>
▲
==Description==
The RCM is an abstract conceptual model that helps to understand and explore recordkeeping activities (as interaction) in relation to multiple contexts over space and time ([[spacetime]]).<ref name="McK2001">{{cite journal |last=McKemmish |first=S. |year=2001 |title=Placing records continuum theory and practice |journal=Archival Science |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=333–359 |
The RCM
{| class="wikitable"
Line 22 ⟶ 25:
The value of the RCM is that it can help to visualize where on the continuum recordkeeping activities can be placed. The continuum can then be used to explore conceptual and practical assumptions that underpin recordkeeping practices, in particular the dualisms inherent in the usage and practice of the terms "records" and "archives".<ref name="upward1"/> This definition lends itself to a linear reading of the RCM – beginning with ''Create'' and working outwards towards ''Pluralization'' of recorded information. Another linear reading is to consider design first – the role that systems of ''Pluralization'' and ''Organization'' play in designing, planning and implementing recordkeeping and then considering the implications for ''Create'' and ''Capture''. However, these are just two of many ways to interpret the model as the dimensions and axes represent multiple realities that occur within spacetime, any of which can occur simultaneously, concurrently and sequentially in electronic or digital environments, and/or physical spaces.<ref name="curtin"/><ref>{{cite journal |last=Reed |first=B. |year=2005 |title=Reading the records continuum: interpretations and explorations |journal=Archives and Manuscripts |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=18–43 }}</ref>
By representing multiple realities, the RCM articulates the numerous and diverse points of view that contribute to records and archives including individual, group, community, organizational, institutional and societal perspectives. These contexts reveal the need to consider various stakeholders and co-contributors in relation to use, access and appraisal of records and archives.<ref name="McK2001" /> Over the lifespan of a record, multiple decisions are made by various stakeholders of the records that include, but are not limited to records managers and archivists. Other stakeholders can be identified at various dimensions of interaction, including those involved in providing information (not only the person or organization who produced or captured it), as well as their family and community. Records are therefore not simply physical or digital representations of physical objects held and managed in an archive or repository, but are evidence of multiple perspectives, narratives and contexts that contributed to their formation.
The
What this means is that records are == Theory and influences ==
The RCM is a representation of what is commonly referred to as records continuum theory, as well as Australian continuum thinking and/or approaches.<ref name="McK2001"/> These ideas were evolved as part of an Australian approach to archival management espoused by Ian Maclean, Chief Archivist of the Commonwealth Archives Office in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Maclean, whose ideas and practices were the subject of the first RCRG publication in 1994,<ref>{{cite book |last1=McKemmish |first1=S. |last2=Piggott |first2=M. |year=1994 |title=The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives: first fifty years |publisher=Ancora Press |place=Clayton |isbn=086862019X }}</ref> referred in a 1959 ''American Archivist'' article to a "continuum of (public) records administration" from administrative efficiency through recordkeeping to the safe keeping of a "cultural end-product".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Maclean |first=I. |title=Australian experience in records and archives management |journal=American Archivist |year=1959 |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=383–418 |doi=10.17723/aarc.22.4.cu4242717578022t |doi-access=free }}</ref>
Further influences on the RCRG group include archival professionals and researchers like [[Archives & Museum Informatics|David Bearman]] and his work on transactionality and systems thinking, and [[Terry Cook (archivist)|Terry Cook]]'s ideas about postcustodialism and macroappraisal.<ref name="Upw2000">{{cite journal |last=Upward |first=F. |year=2000 |title=Modelling the continuum as paradigm shift in recordkeeping and archiving processes, and beyond – a personal reflection |journal=Records Management Journal |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=115–39 |
Post-custodiality as an archival concept plays a major role in how the RCM was conceived. This term was born from an identified and urgent need to address the complexities of computer technologies on records creation and management over time and space.<ref name="U&M1994">{{cite journal |last1=Upward |first1=F. |last2=McKemmish |first2=S |year=1994 |title=Somewhere beyond custody: literature review |journal=Archives and Manuscripts |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=136–149 |url=https://www.zotero.org/groups/records_continuum_research_group_publications/items/itemKey/RHKH3WD5/q/somewhere%20beyond }}</ref> Post-custodiality is discussed by Frank Upward and Sue McKemmish in 1994 as part of an exploration of changes in archival discourse commencing in the 1980s by Gerald Ham and expanded on by [[Terry Cook (archivist)|Terry Cook]] as part of a "post-custodial paradigm shift".<ref name="U&M1994"/><ref>{{cite journal |last=Ham |first=F. G. |year=1981 |title=Archival strategies for the post-custodial era |journal=American Archivist |volume=44 |issue=3 |pages=207–16 |doi=10.17723/aarc.44.3.6228121p01m8k376 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Cook |first=T. |
Drawing from the above theoretical foundations, the RCM as a framework acknowledges the central role that recordkeeping activities have on the creation, capture, organization and ongoing management of records over time and throughout spaces such as organizations and institutional archives. Recordkeeping is a practice and a concept clearly defined in the archival and records literature by continuum writers as "a broad and inclusive concept of integrated recordkeeping and archiving processes for current, regulatory, and historical recordkeeping purposes".<ref name="elis"/> Recordkeeping refers to the activities performed on records that add new contexts such as capturing a record into a system, adding metadata, or selecting it for an archive. In the RCM records are therefore not defined according to their status as objects. Rather, records are understood as being part of a continuum of activity related to known (as well as potentially unknown) contexts. A record (as well as records, collections and archives) are therefore part of larger social, cultural, political, legal and archival processes. It is these contexts that are vital to understanding the role, value and evidential qualities of records in and across spacetime (past, present and potential future).<ref>{{cite book |last=Upward |first=F. |year=2005 |chapter=The Records Continuum |editor1-first=S. |editor1-last=McKemmish |editor2-first=M. |editor2-last=Piggott |editor3-first=B. |editor3-last=Reed |editor4-first=F. |editor4-last=Upward |title=Archives: Recordkeeping in Society |pages=197–222 |place=Wagga Wagga, NSW |publisher=Centre for Information Studies }}</ref>
Line 48 ⟶ 53:
Other models:
* Juridical contexts of the
* Mediated
==References==
Line 58 ⟶ 63:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Records Continuum Model, The}}
[[Category:Conceptual models]]
[[Category:Information science]]
| |||