Overview of records and recordkeeping

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OVERVIEW
•What is a record?
•Communication
•Memory/tradition
•Recordkeeping =
  secret

BIBLIOGRAPHY

What do you know about records?

Never thought about them? Nothing? Not much?

Never fear! You share this view with most of the human race.

While records are rarely noticed or appreciated, they are almost as important to your well being as breathing.

Skeptical? Well, it is a pretty amazing claim, but just read on!

Although the Book of Hours manuscript is most revered as a work of art, it also 'records' courtly life in France during the 15th century.

What is a record?

Humans invented records to enable people and organisations to conduct their affairs. Records are society's tools for establishing facts and provide a concrete way to validate human memory.

Most importantly, records serve as evidence or proof of decisions and actions taken by individuals, organisations and governments. We can think of records as the vital 'glue' that holds society together. Without recordkeeping, civil societies as we know them would not exist.

SITE TO VISIT - Ask.com (a metasearch engine) about terms such as recordkeeping and archives.

Communication, writing and civilisation

Individuals, groups and societies record their activities in different ways, depending on the methods of communication available to them. We don't know when human languages first appeared. We can only assume that because of the characteristics of our species (and the other humanoids that preceded us), language and communication became necessary for humans to live in larger groups. Communication by signs and gestures is useful for hunting parties. Whole gestural languages of North American Indians and the Chinese have been documented. Dance and music are coded systems that are used in some cultures to preserve history and traditions. Other systems of notation include tattoo, scarification, drums (Africa and Melanesia), colored knots (Inca quippus), carved sticks (Scandinavia and Australia), shell and beadwork wampum (North American Indians), tattoos and pictographs.

The earliest forms of human communication were based upon carving, painting, speech, gestures and other signals (smoke, drums) for conveying customs, religious rituals and some forms of knowledge between individuals and generations. While art was used as a lasting format and ancient carvings and paintings such as petroglyphs have survived, their messages are not entirely understood.

In short, many early methods of communication could not convey ideas reliably and accurately across distance and time.

SITES TO VISIT - Discover 'Earliest Writing Found' on the BBC News Online.

A simple, but standardised tool is used to incise 14th century BC Ugarit characters on a soft clay pot. If the message was important enough to retain, the vessel would then be baked in a kiln to preserve it.

Human memory and oral tradition: Then and now

Oral tradition, which uses speech, art and ritual performances (dance, legend and song) as a way to record and pass on culture, is still evident in small, cohesive societies. In recent years, dominant 'writing' cultures have begun to accept that these 'living records' are valid and legally acceptable when presented as evidence by native peoples asserting their rights.

SITES TO VISIT - see 'Aboriginal Law and Legislation' on Bill Henderson's (a Canadian barrister) website and cases of oral traditions succeeding in land claims, etc. in Australia and Canada from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Native Title Research Unit.

There is a danger that the precious knowledge contained in oral traditions may die with this generation of remembrancers unless it can be captured and safeguarded in a way acceptable to those who hold the memories. Current technologies such as CDs are playing a part in recording such information.

SITES TO VISIT - see sites discussing the protection of aboriginal culture such as Bill Henderson's 'Aboriginal Arts and Culture' web pages and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies site.

As living conditions stabilised and societies became more populous and complex, human memory became inadequate to keep up with the increasing detail. Advancement in business and government required long-term rules and structures that could be understood and used across cultures. In the pursuit of large-scale trade and conquest, humans evolved a new information technology - writing- to record their dealings in a simple, reliable and portable manner.

SITE TO VISIT - view the Media History Project pages on the history of different types of communication.

Using standardised symbols and methods of recording enabled humans to express complex ideas and subtleties of information more clearly. Events could be described in writing as they were occuring and kept as independent evidence of prior actions and decisions. The invention of writing supplied the information life blood required for the lasting military and cultural domination known as imperialism.

The Rosetta Stone was inscribed with a message in 3 languages praising the Egyptian king Ptolemy V in 196 BC. This allowed the hieroglyphic and demotic language versions to be deciphered by comparison with the known Greek script.

Because literacy was new and jealously guarded, only a privileged few could write. These officials, trained in the mysteries of records creation, storage and retrieval, often wielded great power and influence as conduits of royal authority.

Thus systematic recordkeeping provided the essential infrastructure for the development of the empires of old and commerce across continents.

The reliable and accurate documentation achieved through systematic recordkeeping permitted effective planning and evaluation and gave rise to the western concepts of progress and civilisation. that were used so effectively to defend five thousand years of imperial conquest and colonial exploitation.

Early writing instruments

Why recordkeeping is the world's best kept secret

Today, recordkeeping provides the intellectual infrastructure that underpins all human endeavour. The components of an ideal society: freedom, responsibility, accountability, integrity, industry and justice cannot exist without effective recordkeeping support. Yet, the recordkeeping discipline is little known and neglect of recordkeeping is endemic worldwide.

'I don’t get no respect' has been the recordkeepers lament for hundreds of years. Why is the secret world of recordkeeping so grudgingly undertaken and funded, so behind-the-scenes, so often the target of disdainful stereotyping? The reasons for this situation are conflicting, complex and many of them arise from just being human.

1. Freedom of action

The first and most basic reason is that people want to conduct their affairs as they please and they only keep records out of necessity. In fact, recordkeepers don’t want to be scrutinised or held accountable for their actions any more than anyone else.

Fourteen reasons why people keep records!

2. Consciences aren't popular

Because recordkeeping documents the sweep of human thought and action, warts and all, stores of records and archives are the de facto 'consciences' of those who created them. While no one denies that consciences are essential in responsible societies, they can confront us with words and acts we prefer to forget.

3. Invisible and automatic functionality

Also, recordkeeping is an autonomic and largely invisible function, subsumed beneath and entwined with the activities it enables. Thus most people are as unaware of it as we are of breathing . . . until something goes wrong. Even though we acknowledge we need recordkeeping, we view it as a complication that slows us from getting on with our real work.

4. Recordkeeping is boring

Add to this the fact that many recordkeeping activities are tedious and it is easy to see why promoting recordkeeping doesn’t evoke great enthusiasm.

5. Inward-facing operations

Archives and records management programs exist primarily to document and serve the requirements of their host organisations and, secondarily, to contribute raw material for societal memory. As such, they are jurisdiction bound and inward looking in contrast to libraries, museums and art galleries that are outward looking and service publicly mandated education. Libraries especially benefit from their symbiotic relationship with the powerful industries of publishing and education, while recordkeeping regimes operate more or less entirely on resources from their host institutions.

Court records provide evidence of society's actions

6. Confusion and inexperience

Confusion about the nature of recordkeeping work abounds because most people form their views from limited experience. After all, using archives and developing recordkeeping competencies are not part of basic education as are experiences and skills with books and museum objects. For example, most people have contact with records as office files but know little about their management. Some may have come across a book or film that mentions archives or seen a 'famous' record on exhibition. Even recordkeeping specialists are held 'captive' by the discipline knowledge base at the time they were training and/or by 'how things are done' within a particular context of practice. These opinions about what records and archives are can unwittingly constitute a mindset that excludes other views and narrows perspective.

All of these factors in concert result in recordkeeping functionality being taken for granted and in specialist recordkeepers seldom being consulted despite events dependent upon recordkeeping going seriously wrong. [1] The resulting confusion also explains why recordkeepers’ efforts to achieve professional recognition have been only partly successful to date.

Footnote:

1. Paraphrased and summarised from Michel Duchein (1983), Obstacles to the access, use and transfer of information from archives: A RAMP study. Paris, UNESCO, 1983.