Trapped in our own ways of thinking about records

Records is in a state of flux at the moment (if you disagree with that, i want to hear from you).

The problem, is that there is a set of models in all our heads that say "records management."

Then there's a set of problems that our organisations have.

And (generally speaking), they're at a scale that the models in our heads weren't designed to solve, executed by people who were never supposed to be records managers (ie. users) and involve technologies that records hasn't really figured out - even though they're being used

by people

to create records

all day long.

The first step to freeing ourselves is to realise that we and the models in our heads are the problems.

We're the water carriers trying to tell people about the superiority of a clay urn balanced on the head when the city has 100,000 people and doesn't just need water for drinking anymore because the scale of need has transformed the consumption model - they need it for sanitation, and cooking, and washing clothes indoors.

What they needed was aqueducts - and then at some point, the pressure gravity could supply just wasn't enough, and we couldn't find water sources that were up a hill from where we needed the water - so we invented pumps and pipework and the modern systems that we have now.

Records practice as we do it was designed to be done on a record by record basis, executed by professionals and be done using paper or something else physical.

There will be an instinctive knee jerk reaction for many of you reading this that it isn't the case.

Take a week to think about it though.

Think about how often you're talking about and thinking about an individual record.

Think about how often you're thinking about records as some documents.

Think about how often you're considering something as though it's being done someone who needs to be trained before they can do it properly (ie. they need OUR expertise to make sense of it - not THEIR expertise).

If you're asking the right questions, you might start to become aware that records practices are now how you see the world.

The reason this takes mental effort, is because you're an expert.

And like all experts, you've become “unconsciously competent” - so you're not even aware of the way you think anymore, you just do it with speed and accuracy that people with less expertise can’t hope to match.

And this is the core problem of moving records practice forward.

First we have to recognise that we're doing it.

Then we have to examine it critically.

Then we have to change it.

Because the clay urn on the head solved a particular problem at a particular time.

And none of us own clay urns anymore.