Introduction

Recordkeeping is, essentially, a profession predicated upon control. Such control may be to ensure the ‘moral defence’ of the archive or to prevent a reversion ‘to primitive habits’ and the unreasonable destruction of archives and records (Jenkinson, 1965, 152), or it may be to encourage ‘efficient management’ and ‘the minimum charge for space and maintenance’ (Schellenberg, 2003, 37). Control may be exerted by different agents, including the records creator, originating organization, users, communities or recordkeepers; what Harris (2005, 115) might characterize collectively as ‘recordmakers’, recognizing the influence of those agents upon the record and the influence of the record upon them. However, regardless of the agency applying control and despite debate on the extent to which objective control is achievable or desirable, the necessity of establishing systems and processes designed to ensure fixity – ‘the quality of being stable and resisting change’ (PearceMoses, 2005) – and warrant the authenticity, reliability and integrity of records and archives (see, for example, ISO, 2001) is, arguably, at the core of professional practice. When it is distilled to absolute basics, recordkeepers decide what to preserve, for how long and the most suitable way to dispose of records; they apply measures to ensure the longevity of records for an appropriate period of time; and they organize, list and manage access to records (Jimerson, 2009, 10). Without some degree of consistency, these activities would be haphazard and largely meaningless, hence the standardized, codified and controlled nature of the recordkeeping profession.

In a volume dedicated to a reexamination and exploration of the theoretical foundations of aspects of the profession, it seems prudent, in this chapter, to reflect on the relevance of theoretical discourse in recordkeeping at a time when the role and purpose of the records professions is challenged continually by a rapidly evolving technical, informational and cultural landscape. In a world where ‘technology [has] expanded the scale of human creativity and social interaction’, where ‘creative participatory culture [has become] global’ (Stryker, 2012, 14) and where the internet has changed fundamentally personal and organizational relationships with information and the understanding of what it is to be part of a community, significant questions are raised concerning the fitness for purpose of recordkeeping. Are recordkeepers risking obsolescence by ‘merely finding new ways of saying the same thing, based on the same well-worn concepts’ (Bailey, 2008, 124)?