Records continuum model: Difference between revisions

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[[File:The_Records_Continuum_Model.gif|thumb|right|The records continuum model]]

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|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>

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.

==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 |doi=10.1007/BF02438901 }}}</ref> Recordkeeping activities span a time period encompassing multiple action structures within recordkeeping, including ''contemporary recordkeeping, regulatory recordkeeping, and historical recordkeeping.''Through policies, systems, organizations, processes, laws, and social mandates, archivists and recordkeepers are able to appraise records in a manner which accounts for the record from the time period prior to its creation to its use in current recordkeeping practices.<ref name="upward1" /> In a continuum, recordkeeping processes, such as adding [[metadata]], ''fix'' documents, to enable them to be managed as contextual evidence.<ref name="McK2001" /> Records deemed as having continuing value are retained and managed as ''historical recordkeeping'' via the context of provenance, however, records which have no archival value are destroyed once they lose their administrative value.<ref>{{cite news |last=O'Shea |first=Greg |last2=Roberts |first2=David |type=Pdf |title=Living in a Digital World: Recognizing the Electronic and Post-custodial Realities |work=Archives and Manuscripts |date=1996 }}</ref> The implication of an RCM approach to archiving is that systems and processes establish records as both current and archival at the point of creation.<ref name="curtin">{{cite web|url=http://john.curtin.edu.au/society/australia/ |title=404 |accessdate=2015-10-01 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141013123845/http://john.curtin.edu.au/society/australia/ |archivedate=2014-10-13 }}</ref>

The RCM can be visualized as a series of 4 concentric rings, or dimensions; ''Document Creation'', ''Records Capture'', ''The Organization of Corporate and Personal Memory'' and ''The Pluralization of Collective Memory'' intersecting with a set of crossed axes; transactionality, evidentiality, recordkeeping and identity.<ref name="upward1" /> Each axis is labelled with a description of the activity or interaction that occurs at that intersection. ''Create'', ''Capture'', ''Organize'' and ''Pluralize'', as the dimensions are referred to in short, represent recordkeeping activities that occur within spacetime. Activities that occur in these dimensions across the axes are explained in the table below:<ref name="elis"/><ref>The information in the table is drawn from {{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>

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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 records continuum model is often described as being in contrast or at odds with the [[Records life-cycle|lifecycle]] records model.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.archivists.org/glossary/terms/r/records-continuum |title=Records Continuum |work=A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology |publisher=Society of American Archivists |accessdate=5 August 2016 }}</ref><ref name="McK1997">{{cite book |last=McKemmish |first=S. |year=1997 |chapter=Yesterday, today and tomorrow: a continuum of responsibility |title=Proceedings of the Records Management Association of Australia 14th National Convention, 15–17 Sept 1997 |pages=18–36 |place=Perth, Australia |publisher=RMAA }}</ref> While the RCM is inclusive of multiple ways of conceptualizing and performing recordkeeping, including a lifecycle approach, there are some significant differences. While the lifecycle approach shows clearly designated phases in the management of records, a continuum approach conceptualizes these individual elements as continuous and not as discernable parts.<ref name="McK1997"/> Second, the lifecycle approach clearly identifies conceptual and procedural boundaries between current and inactive records. Current records are identified as "records" while inactive or historical records are identified as "archives." However, a continuum approach sees records management as an integrated process which crosses spacetime. This more temporal method of recordkeeping processes enables their use for multiple contexts and representations.

What this means is that records are "in a state of always becoming...",<ref name="McK2001"/>, able to contribute new contexts dependent on the differing perceptions and historical backgrounds of various stakeholders who are analyzing their contents. Archival records are therefore not just historical or fixed, but are able to be re-interpreted, re-created, and re-contextualized according to their place and use in spacetime. In this way, archival institutions are nodes in the network of recorded information and its contexts, rather than the end point in a lifecycle stage for records that are managed as "relics".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Acland |first=G. |year=1992 |title=Managing the record rather than the relic |journal=Archives & Manuscripts |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=57–63 }}</ref>

== Theory and influences ==

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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 |doi=10.1108/EUM0000000007259 }}</ref> Broader influences to the continuum theory come from philosophers and social theorists [[Jacques Lacan]], [[Michel Foucault]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[Jean-François Lyotard]], as well as sociologist [[Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens|Anthony Giddens]], with structuration theory being a core component of understanding social interaction over spacetime.<ref name="elis"/> Canadian archivist Jay Atherton's critique of the division between records managers and archivists in the 1980s and use of the term "records continuum"<ref>{{cite journal |last=Atherton |first=J. |title=From life cycle to continuum: some thoughts on the records management-archives relationship |journal=Archivaria |date=1985–1986 |volume=21 |pages=43–51 }}</ref> re-commenced the conversation MacLean began during his career and helped to bring his ideas and this term to Australian records continuum thinking.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bwalya |first1=K. J. |last2=Mnjama |first2=N. M. |last3=Sebina |first3=P. M. I. M. |year=2014 |title=Concepts and Advances in Information Knowledge Management: Studies from Developing and Emerging Economies |publisher=Chandos Publishing }}</ref> Atherton's use of the term records continuum has several significant differences in conception, application and heritage when compared to Australian records continuum thinking.<ref name="elis"/><ref>{{cite book |last=Upward |first=F. |year=1994 |chapter=In Search of the Continuum: Ian Maclean's "Australian Experience" Essays on Recordkeeping |editor1-first=S. |editor1-last=McKemmish |editor2-first=M. |editor2-last=Piggott |title=The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives: first fifty years |publisher=Ancora Press |place=Clayton |isbn=086862019X |pages=110–130 |chapter-url=https://www.zotero.org/groups/records_continuum_research_group_publications/items/itemKey/5PX3PN3N/q/in%20search%20of%20the%20continuum }}</ref>

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 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Cook |first=T. |authorlinkauthor-link=Terry Cook (archivist) |year=1994 |title=Electronic records, paper minds: the revolution in information management and archives in the post-custodial and post-modernist era |journal=Archives and Manuscripts |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=300–28 }}</ref> Post-custodiality in relation to the RCM is explored by Upward and McKemmish as an entry point into a wider conversation about records and recordkeeping being part of a process in which archival institutions have a part to play beyond that of the archival authority handling, [[Archival appraisal|appraisal]], describing and arranging physical objects in their custody.

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>

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[[Category:Conceptual models]]

[[Category:Information science]]