Do we need better records verbs?
I keep thinking about the terminology that we use in records.
Particularly those that describe the day to day work which isn’t done by us.
Mostly, I'm wondering about the utility of "record keeping."
We think about it as the creation of a record.
But it doesn't sound like that.
It sounds like holding on to something.
I feel like some other term would connect better with people who are keeping records all day long - but just don't associate what they're doing with record keeping.
Record making feels right - but also strange and new.
I like it because a person who keeps lots of things is a hoarder.
A person who makes lots of things is productive.
What do you think?
Do you use other terms in your practice?
It's probably not material to anything you wrote, but "keep" here is surely not the same meaning in "keep the change" or "keep one copy, chuck the rest". The meaning here is like "protect", "take care of", "look after". I think in modern English this meaning only shows up in phrases related to professions: book keeping, zoo keeping, record keeping... Eddie Izzard plays on these two meanings in a sketch about an aspiring bee keeper: "I want to keep bees! I'll put a piece of string around them so they can't get away!"
Anyway, I bothered to write about the above not to quibble about etymology (not just) but because I regularly use those alternatives above, most often "protect". In my experience people very easily get the idea of protecting information that's in their care, and that is usually what I would mean if I were asking them to be good record keepers. I also find "protect" helpful because it can be used to encompass information security and privacy-related requirements. Perhaps a bit of a wider scope than what people think of if they think about keeping records.
On the other hand, a word like "protect" does not explicitly cover creating records in the first place, but "create" is a clear, every day verb and no great harm in saying this as two points: you need to make records of what you've done and you need to protect the records in your care.