Search results

The Information Age during the transition from the paper era to the digital one saw the fracturing and fragmenting of the information-based specialisations. More recently, professional norms for governance have been swept aside within new business models based on information based business applications. This paper aims to support an advance towards networked cohesion based on informatics, regenerating professionalism for the complex networked age.

New regulatory approaches will have to manage monistic diversity, connecting the deeper logic of continuum thinking in which information governance exists as part of a simple whole (the monistic component) with a recognition that the parts of information governance are much more complex than the whole (the expanding diversity). A continuum approach of this type involves studying things in motion as part of evolutionary processes.

The production of information is galloping ahead of its authoritative management, and this is at the heart of many of the failings of the post-truth information era. Informatics with its emphasis upon the joint operation of technologies, social processes and knowledge forming and its ability to be an umbrella term for many specialisations can be a cohering force.

The alignment of thought, action and ethical information governance across inter-connected practices for individuals, groups and organisations can be supported by the deeper logic and grounded experience of continuum thinking.

This paper will look to expand the array of sympathisers who wish to get more in touch with studying things in motion, including those trying to cope with the need to develop more adequate ways for managing nanosecond archiving processes.

The greatest challenges with which digital systems present us are the creation and maintenance of reliable records and the preservation of their authenticity over time. It is vital for every organisation that its records be able to stand for the facts they are about i.e. that their content is trustworthy. To meet these challenges the international community of records professionals must develop appropriate strategies, procedures and standards. In this article the author explores the concepts and principles derived from archival diplomatics that should guide the management of electronic records and therefore these developments, as well as drawing conclusions about the nature of the research work required

There is limited discussion in the teacher education literature about the experiences of pre-service black male teachers generally and the ethnic diversity among black male pre-service teachers specifically. Thus, this paper aims to explore the experiences of Frank, a black male refugee health education major attending an historically black college and university (HBCU).

This research study is theoretically guided by selected tenets of Bush and Bush’s (2013) African American male theory and Goodman et al.’s (2006) transition framework and uses a qualitative approach to explore Frank’s transition experiences when coming to America, attending college and engaging in his student teaching experience.

Frank experienced some difficulty transitioning to America, as a result of not having a strong financial foundation. During his college transition, Frank believed that the HBCU environment was nurturing; however, he encountered numerous ethnocentrically charged hostile confrontations from US-born black students at his university because of his accent. While he had some disagreements with the US education system in terms of discipline, Frank believed that his accent served as an asset during student teaching.

This study adds to the burgeoning research that explores the intersectional identities among pre-service black male teachers. As we argue in this paper, researchers, policymakers and practitioners cannot treat black male teachers as a monolithic group and must contemplate the unique supports needed that can attend to the racial and ethnic needs of black male teachers.

In this commemorative issue of Records Management Journal, milestones from the last 20 years of recordkeeping practice are being celebrated. This paper aims to provide a retrospective of the records continuum and examine its evolution, its impact and its influence, and to reference some of the controversy it has inspired.

The paper is based on a review of literature and a historical assessment, which are intended to contextualise and explain the continuum.

The continuum has a long history in Australian recordkeeping culture, but significant international research and theory have also fed into its development. The continuum has an enduring relevance and remains a fundamental tool for assessing and realigning recordkeeping practice today.

The paper is strongly supportive of the continuum approach, and as such is not an impartial assessment of the model and of the criticism that has been levelled against it.

It is hoped that the paper helps to foster further understanding and use of the records continuum model.

While owing a great deal to Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, the paper aims to present a fresh perspective on continuum theory, in a way that helps to explain and encourage the adoption of continuum‐based approaches to recordkeeping.

This article outlines the development of a records continuum model initially developed as a teaching tool to communicate evidence‐based approaches to archives and records management. The continuum is being used in Australia as a metaphor to assist in getting records management ‘right’ in recordkeeping environments built around electronic communications, and the model supports this endeavour. It extends the concept of the continuum beyond metaphor, representing the case for viewing it in its fuller spacetime meanings as a worldview. In this form, the continuum is potentially a technologically driven paradigm shift within all information management and systems practice. There is a new game developing and the concept of the continuum can help us re‐organise our knowledge for that game. This article will discuss the diversity of records management theory and practice. It will look at the meanings of the continuum and my own model of it, including the differences between a worldview and a detailed view. Three other continuum models are presented. A continuum ‘patrol and control’ strategy for analysis is outlined briefly, and represents a point at which my own approach to the continuum is taking off into more detailed practical considerations in records management education and training.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the creation and sharing of information by Bangladeshi women participants in a community informatics project and to assess to what extent the information provided to them meets their short and longer-term needs.

The analysis is based on data collected during a workshop with village women in Dhaka and focus group discussions in rural Bangladesh in March and April 2019. The information continuum model is used as a framework to analyse the data.

The study shows that the women document their learning and share it with their families and communities and that they are very conscious of the importance of keeping analogue back-ups of the information provided to them in digital format. They use notebooks to write down information that they find useful and they copy information provided to them on brown paper sheets hung in the village community houses.

This paper raises questions about how information is communicated to village women, organised and integrated in a community informatics project, and more generally about the suitability and sustainability of providing information in digital formats in a developing country.

The paper shows how village women participants in a community informatics project in Bangladesh took the initiative to create and preserve the information that was useful to them in analogue formats to remedy the limitations of the digital formats and to keep the information accessible in the longer term.

The purpose of this study is to examine the life and work of Frank Gilbreth using a critical biographical approach to draw connections between his life experiences and the major contributions he made to management history.

The research design is critical biography. First, a biography is provided that reveals critical incidents from his childhood, his early career before marriage, his life after his marriage and his key personality traits. Gilbreth’s major contributions to management thought are then considered in context of his biography.

Although Frank Gilbreth is recalled for his contributions to management history through his work in advancing efficiency through motion studies, he should likewise be credited for his foresight of management theories related to the human element in organizations. The major influences on Gilbreth’s career include Lillian Gilbreth and Frederick Taylor.

A limitation of critical biography is that researchers cannot address causality but, rather, are focused on drawing connections between life experiences and significant accomplishments.

Critical biography can illuminate theory and practice by providing greater clarity by examining concepts in depth and in context. The authors situate Frank Gilbreth’s work in the context of his lived experiences.

The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel program. In July of 1979, the President asked for an $88 billion “crash program” to encourage development of synthetic fuels. To date, a three month struggle to reach a consensus between House and Senate conferees has brought only limited results. Compromise is emerging in the form of a proposal for a “synthetic fuels corporation.” The body would have the authority to disperse $20 billion in the form of federal loan guarantees and purchase agreements with more money to become available later.

In the 1990s, North American archivists and records managers shifted some of their concern with electronic records and record keeping systems to conducting research about the nature of these records and systems. This essay describes one of the major research projects at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, supported with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Specifically, the essay focuses on the project's four main products: recordkeeping functional requirements, production rules to support the requirements, metadata specifications for record keeping, and the warrant reflecting the professional and societal endorsement of the concept of the recordkeeping functional requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the widespread crisis facing the archives and records management professions, and to propose recordkeeping informatics, a single minded disciplinary approach, as a way forward.

This paper reflects an Australasian perspective on the nature of the crisis besetting archives and records management professions as people struggle to adjust to digitally converged information ecologies. It suggests recordkeeping informatics as an approach for refiguring thinking, systems, processes and practices as people confront ever increasing information convergence, chaos and complexity. It discusses continuum thinking and recordkeeping metadata as two key building blocks of the approach, along with three facets of recordkeeping analysis involving the understanding of organisational culture, business process analysis and archival access.

Discussion of information and communication technologies as a “wild frontier” highlights the breaking down of recordkeeping processes within them. The causes for this chaos are complex and there is an urgent need to develop more coherent frameworks to identify and address the issues. Such frameworks need to grow from, and be conversant with, strong symbiotic relationships between social formations, recordkeeping processes, and archives, so that they may be applicable in an increasingly diverse range of organisational and community contexts. Embracing complexity is a must if the wild frontier is not to grow wilder.

The paper outlines a new disciplinary base from which new and old recordkeeping methods can be launched that are appropriate for this era.