Had an interesting discussion on a Listserv (remember them?) about recordkeeping and mass storage. I mentioned how I don’t select different files to be kept for different periods as the law requires (you know, financial stuff 7 years etc), I just image everything using BootitNG, burn it onto DVD’s and keep the lot until the bottom drawer fills up, then I toss the oldest ones. Currently that means I have disk images going back to the late 1990′s, containing some documents I still need to keep even if the law says I could have discarded them, and others I could have tossed years ago but can’t easily separate out from the disk images.
Hey, it works for me.
In contrast, in my work environment, I’m running a full blown records management operation, with policies, procedures, staff, training, budgets, software systems and databases, all designed to tag records according to the multitude of different disposal triggers and dates. But what if the same principle applies – just buy lots of cheap storage and keep the lot? Let’s assume we solve the problems of changes in technology and software over time (I used to have some WordPerfect 4.1 files on 3.5 inch diskettes, with nary a diskette drive in the house for several years now) what then is the role of a records manager?
There will be a role, but it won’t be centered around disposal, which we will manage with a very broad big bucket approach. Instead of the hundreds of different categories we have today, we’ll maybe have ten, because there are few risks and little or no extra cost in keeping stuff longer.
Quite simply, we have to get away from disposal, and focus instead on helping people index and organise their documents in simple ways so they can be easily retrieved when a Google-type search doesn’t work. For too long the Records profession has let disposal distort everything else we do, and it’s the tail wagging the dog.
Hence my interest in epistemology, simple search systems (I use Copernic on my PC), disc imaging and large lumps of cheap storage.
