The Society of Archivists' Conference, Glasgow, 31 August to 3 September 2004

Citation

Tough, A. (2005), "The Society of Archivists' Conference, Glasgow, 31 August to 3 September 2004", Records Management Journal, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2005.28115aac.002

The Society of Archivists' Conference, Glasgow, 31 August to 3 September 2004

The Society of Archivists’ Conference, Glasgow, 31 August to 3 September 2004

Keywords: Archives management, Conferences, United KingdomReview DOI: 10.1108/095656090510585439

The purpose of this review is to draw attention to contributions, developments and resources that may be of interest to records managers. It is not intended as a full report on the proceedings.

Paul Duguid, as keynote speaker, got the conference off to a rousing start. He observed that records professionals have much to contribute in an information society. Furthermore, they have a major opportunity at present because the ICT “techies” have overplayed their hand with their reliance on ever more powerful search engines that demonstrably do not live up to the promises made for them.

James Currall, who is responsible for Glasgow University’s Information Strategy gave an sobering account of what, in his experience, constitutes the basis of management decision making:

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  There is a good business case – the benefits outweigh the costs.

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  The proposal provides the manager with something they want or value (either from an institutional or personal viewpoint).

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  The proposal makes the manager’s life easier.

He emphasised that arguments based on risk will only work if they also address one of the above. From this, he argued that records professionals need to put more effort into understanding the businesses they individually work in and to seeing the world as top management see it. This provides most of us with something to think about.

The value of good record keeping was starkly illustrated by Viktor Kamto. He described how the procurement activities of the Cameroons’ government had become deeply corrupt. Major contracts had been awarded (e.g. for bridges and airports) and paid for without any construction work actually taking place. Those involved had then taken advantage of weak record keeping systems to destroy the evidence of their criminal behaviour. One of the solutions adopted by the Government is to employ a private sector company (CinvCor, S.A.) to design and implement robust new systems.

The future prospects for post-graduate education of records professionals were addressed (amongst other things) by Margaret Procter, Mary Ellis, Wendy Duff and Karen Anderson. A certain amount of gloom was generated by their shared observation that we in the UK urgently need to produce our own Ph.D. graduates so that the training courses can be appropriately staffed in future. The gloom was lightened, however, by accounts of the comparative success achieved by research conducted in Australia and North America. A key point is that we need to find innovative research methods of our own to match our focus on unique information objects in context. Karen urged all of those involved in teaching and research to register and to supply details of their research interests at http://sciswork.scis.ecu.edu.au/icacae

Zoe Smyth reported good progress on the PRONI scheme for piloting an EDRMS and underpinning it with a functional file plan and classification scheme for shared functions. A “First lessons learnt” report is due out around Christmas time and should make interesting reading for those of us who have not yet taken the plunge.

Alistair ToughResearcher, NHS Glasgow/Glasgow University Archives