Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World
Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World
Article Type: Publications From: Records Management Journal, Volume 19, Issue 1
S. Bailey,Facet,London,2008,ISBN 978-1-85604-641-1,£39.95 Hardback
This book is an attempt to address and explore the challenge raised to information and records management (RM) by the emerging technologies generally bundled together under the heading of “Web 2.0”. Bailey’s fundamental thesis is that the controlling and top-down approach of “classic”RM is not capable of dealing with the social, user-driven, diffuse way in which these increasingly pervasive technologies are conceptualised, structured, and used. But it is not just Web 2.0 that causes problems for records managers;changes in the digital information environment in general, of which Web 2.0 services are only a small part, have themselves rendered some of the central tenets of our disciplines at the very least open to question and at worst obsolescent.
Bailey’s book is divided into three parts: “The Nature of the Changing World”, in which he outlines developments and trends in the digital environment and its technologies; “Is Records Management No Longer Fit for Purpose?”, which focuses on the ways in which both records professionals and the professions themselves are struggling to get to grips with this changing world; and “Records Management 2.0 and the Future of Records Management”, which outlines some possibilities for confronting the future. Of necessity general rather than specific in many of its suggestions, this final part is nonetheless focused on a concrete set of ten principles, which, it is suggested, could form the core of a new approach to RM that would enable it to deal flexibly and successfully with business records and record keeping in Web 2.0 environments.
Some of what makes Web 2.0 such a headache for records managers lies within the nature of the technologies themselves. Other components of the challenge lie in the profound changes in the social, work and information environments that are not so much parallel with technological developments as thoroughly enmeshed with them. It is not possible here to either fully explore or even synopsise the contents of this book. However, a brief look at the failings of “traditional”RM identified therein may be of benefit.
Bailey chides the failure of RM as a profession to engage in “critical self-examination” and to align its theory with its practice (Chapter 5). Though some might take issue with his characterization of the profession, surely no-one could argue against the need for constant reflection and renewal of the discipline, as advocated in this chapter. Other chapters in Part 2 deal with specific aspects of RM that have been weighed in the balance and found wanting:the distinction between records and information (Chapter 6); the top-down“command and control ethos”, with its tools of classification scheme and file-plan (Chapter 7); format-neutral management of records (Chapter 8);appraisal and disposal (Chapter 9), with a further examination of appraisal theory and practice in Chapter 10. Throughout, the point is made that “users”have their own ideas about information, their own preferred ways of managing it,their own methods of networking and collaborating in a business context, that are mostly derived from their experience as personal users of IT –particularly Web 2.0 – technologies, and that their perspective is at odds both with RM as a centralized management activity and, at points, with the principles and practice of RM.
Organizations face the challenge of balancing the risks of losing management and control of their information with the opportunities offered by innovative technologies and the new ways of thinking and working that exist in the complex interaction of the technologies and their users and their information cultures. Records managers face the risk of being sidelined unless they create the opportunities they need to partake in and manage the new information environments that are increasingly part of the corporate environments in which they work.
This is a polemical book, a call to action, and thus bound to provoke dissent at times even from those who agree with its overall thesis. One such instance for this reviewer lies in Bailey’s prognostication of the “death of the classification scheme” (pp. 74-79) and its possible replacement with tagging, “folksonomies”, social bookmarking, and similar user-driven methods. Classification is a necessary intellectual construct, a way of ordering information, and is a vital part of any information architecture. It may well be the case that it is no longer appropriate (if it ever was) for a classification scheme or a full file-plan to be visible to creators and users of records, and there is certainly no reason why user-assigned tagging etc. should not be built in to the classificatory and descriptive framework; but this is not at all the same as dispensing with it entirely.
But such quibbles are minor, and in fact not even quibbles at all, but evidence of the way in which this book draws the reader straight into the heart of major debates about issues both inside and beyond our profession. Often,Bailey himself raises possibilities only to voice in subsequent paragraphs the very objections that are forming in the reader’s head. The style is admirably lucid and readable, enabling the reader to concentrate unhindered on the arguments and ideas.
There are many books that show us, often very effectively, how to do records management; this is a book that forces us to think about records management, and no-one in our field should leave it unread, even if they end up disagreeing with every word of it.
Rachel HardimanNorthumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
