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This study aims to make the case for real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance as a new foundation for the regulation and systemisation of multiple rights in recordkeeping for the Alternative Care of children and young people.

This article aims to make the case for real-time rights-based recordkeeping governance as a new foundation for the regulation and systemisation of multiple rights in recordkeeping for the Alternative Care of children and young people. It investigates this concept using the Australian context as a critical case study to highlight some of the current limitations in Australian Alternative Care systems in the way recordkeeping rights are represented in existing regulatory frameworks and monitored in practice. This paper will argue for the need for systemic transformations in child protection and information legislation and regulatory systems to better represent and enact alternative care recordkeeping rights.

This analysis of the legislative provisions for participation in recordkeeping and access to records of Care experiences against the Australian Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care reveals a number of limitations. While the direct provision of rights to access records and the strengthening of principles of participation in some of the jurisdictions are welcome, it illustrates how the risk-oriented focus of the legislation on child protection investigations and substantiations encodes opaque recordkeeping practices and works against the provision of the full suite of childhood recordkeeping rights envisaged by the charter. Furthermore, without provisions for systemic and dynamic oversight, those with Care experiences are left to pursue individual outcomes against significant bureaucratic odds.

In line with international recognition that active participation and proactive provision of rights are a protective factor, this article contends that governance frameworks need to be proactively designed to respect and enact recordkeeping rights, along with requiring mechanisms for real-time monitoring and oversight if the records problems of the past are not to be perpetuated.

The study’s proposal for the need for a real-time, rights-based recordkeeping governance seeks to address the systemic recordkeeping problems that have been identified in research and public inquiry related to Alternative Care systems in Australia as well as in the UK.

Adopting a governance model that prioritises real-time, rights-based principles will ultimately impact how the Alternative Care system approaches records and their value in the processes of care.

Placing real-time rights-based governance at the foundation of a reimagining of the Alternative Care recordkeeping model offers the potential to create a system that places rights in recordkeeping and ethics of care at its core. This has highly transformative potential for the overall Alternative Care system and its relationship with children in out-of-home care.

This paper examines the recordkeeping governance requirements of the childhood out-of-home Care sector, with critical interlaced identity, memory, cultural and accountability needs. They argue that as we enter a new era of participation, new models for governance are required to recognise and dynamically negotiate a range of rights in and to records, across space and through time. Instead of recordkeeping configured to support closed organisations and closely bounded information silos, there is a need for recordkeeping to reflect, facilitate and be part of governance frameworks for organisations as nodes in complex information networks.

The paper reports on a key outcome of the Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child National Summit held in Melbourne Australia in May 2017, the National Framework for Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care, and the research and advocacy agenda that will support its development.

The authors argue that as we enter an algorithmic age, designing for shared ownership, stewardship, interoperability and participation is an increasing imperative to address the information asymmetries that foster social disadvantage and discrimination. The authors introduce the concept of participatory information governance in response to social, political and cultural mandates for recordkeeping. Given the challenges associated with progressing new participatory models of recordkeeping governance in the inhospitable environment of existing recordkeeping law, standards and governance frameworks, the authors outline how these frameworks will need to be re-figured for participatory recordkeeping.

The National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care seeks to address the systemic recordkeeping problems that have been most recently highlighted in the 2013-2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care will also address how a suite of recordkeeping rights can be embedded into networked socio-technical systems. This represents an example of a framework for participatory information governance which can help guide the design of new systems in an algorithmic age.

The proposed National Framework represents a new model for recordkeeping governance to recognise and enact multiple rights in records. Designed to support the lifelong identity, memory and accountability needs for those who experience childhood out-of-home Care, it aims to foster the transformation of recordkeeping and archival infrastructure to a participatory model that can address the current inequities and better enable the design and oversight of equitable algorithmic systems.

The ability to establish sustainable frameworks for creating and managing recordkeeping metadata is one of the key challenges for recordkeeping in digital and networked environments. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the Clever Recordkeeping Metadata Project, an Australian research project which sought to investigate how the movement of recordkeeping metadata between systems could be automated.

The project adopted an action research approach to the research, utilising a systems development method within this framework to iteratively build a prototype demonstrating how recordkeeping metadata could be created once in particular application environments, then used many times to meet a range of business and recordkeeping purposes.

Recordkeeping metadata interoperability, like recordkeeping metadata itself, is complex and dynamic. The research identifies the need for standards and tools to reflect and have the capacity to handle this complexity.

This paper provides insights into the complex nature of recordkeeping metadata and the kind of infrastructure that needs to be developed to support its automated capture and re‐use in integrated systems environments.

This paper aims to examine the role a recordkeeping informatics approach can play in understanding and addressing these challenges. In 2011, the Wind Tunnel located at the Defence Science Technology Organisation (DTSO)’s Fisherman’s Bend site in Melbourne and managed by the Flight Systems Branch (FSB) celebrated its 70th anniversary. While cause for celebration, it also raised concerns for DSTO aeronautical scientists and engineers as to capacities to effectively and efficiently manage the data legacy of such an important research facility for the next 70 years, given increased technological, organisational and collaboration complexities.

This paper will detail how, through a collaborative action research project, the twin pillars of continuum thinking and recordkeeping metadata and the three facets of organisational culture, business process analysis and archival access, were used to examine the data, information, records and knowledge management challenges in this research data context. It will discuss how this perspective, was presented, engaged with and evolved into a set of strategies for the sustained development of FSB’s data, information and records management infrastructure, along with what is learnt about the approach through the action research process.

The project found that stressing the underlying principles of recordkeeping, applied to information resources of all kinds, resonated with the scientific community of FSB. It identified appropriate strategic, policy and process frameworks to better govern information management activities.

The utility of a recordkeeping informatics approach to unpack, explore and develop strategies in technically and organisationally complex recordkeeping environment is demonstrated, along with the kinds of professional collaboration required to tackle research data challenges.

In embracing technical and organisational complexity, the project has provided FSB with a strategic framework for the development of their information architecture so that it is both responsive to local needs, and consistent with broader DSTO requirements.

This paper further develops recordkeeping informatics as an emerging approach for tackling the recordkeeping challenges of our era in relation to maintaining and sustaining the evidential authenticity, integrity and reliability of big complex research data sets.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed plan of research on the information architecture of digital library websites.

The research plan was prepared on the basis of a critical analysis of the scientific literature concerning the areas and criteria for the analysis and evaluation of the information architecture of digital resources. The evaluation criteria selected in individual areas of information architecture and the entire evaluation model were tested on the example of Europeana. The study proposes criteria for all areas of information architecture: service identity, organizational system, labeling system and navigation system.

The proposed research model containing areas and criteria for assessing usefulness from the point of view of information architecture may complement the methodology for assessing digital libraries. In a structured manner, it presents areas important for building good digital resources together with criteria for heuristic evaluation. This thesis is confirmed by a study conducted on the example of Europeana.

For a more precise assessment of quality, you can add to the proposed criteria related to the information architecture the criteria proposed by Nielsen or other authors. These include, e.g. help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors, result relevance, consistency of terminology and specific action conventions and an appropriate visual presentation.

The model can be used to assess the quality of websites of various digital libraries.

The methodology of assessing the quality of digital libraries is in the stage of formation and development. Such studies can apply evaluation criteria prepared to analyze all kinds of information systems and most of all web pages. At the beginning of the 21st century, concepts of using information architecture principles to design and evaluate digital libraries’ usability began to take shape. However, no detailed criteria for evaluating digital libraries based on the principles of information architecture have been presented.

The purpose of this paper is to examine critically the history of Records Management Journal on its 20th anniversary; it aims to review and analyse its evolution and its contribution in the context of the development of the profession and the discipline of records management. The paper seeks to provide the context and justification for the selection of eight articles previously published in the journal to be reprinted in this issue.

The paper utilises the contents of Records Management Journal (1989 to date) to present a thematic analysis of topics covered and their development over time, and statistical data (from 2002 to date) provided by the current publisher to assess quantitatively the use and impact of the journal worldwide. The paper then compares this with a series of key turning points in the records management profession.

There is evidence that the initial aspiration for the journal to make an important and long‐lasting impact on the field of records management in the UK has been exceeded because its readers and contributors are global. The volume of downloads has continued to increase year‐on‐year and the journal appears to be the only peer‐reviewed journal in the world in the records management discipline. The journal has responded to and kept abreast of the records management agenda.

The analysis is based on the work of the current and immediate past Editor and did not seek the views of its Editorial Board members, readers or contributors to the journal.

Looking to the future, the journal must seek to widen its impact on other key stakeholders in managing information and records – managers, information systems designers, information creators and users – as well as records professionals. It must also continue to develop the scope of its content, whilst maintaining its focus on managing records, and must keep pace with technology developments. It should try to influence the professional agenda, be controversial, stimulate debate and encourage change. And it should remain a quality resource.

The paper provides a unique critical analysis of the journal, its history and contribution to the development of records management, on its 20th anniversary of publication.