A HISTORY OF RECORDS CLASSIFICATION

In order to understand where we are now in records management land, we need to know a little about the history of our noble profession, which is one of the oldest. Records pre-date writing! The first records were clay statuettes representing real assets such as cows and sheep, or fields of grain; these tiny models were enclosed in a clay parcel and sealed, representing a single transaction - not all that different conceptually from what we do today. When clay tablets were first used, different transactions were recorded by function on tablets of particular sizes, and each tablet was marked with a classification code, representing another attribute. Thousands of tablets marked with the identical classification codes have been located, and soon after this first use of classification, early repositories come about, with the records of transactions kept in purpose-built halls, separately by function. Essentially this model has continued for 5000 years!

The Internet has surrounded us with trillions of records and billions of links and professionally at least, we are flabbergasted. In the nearly two decades since the World Wide Web was launched by Tim Berners-Lee, we have failed to incorporate any aspects of the Web into records management. Or can anyone suggest the ways we have done so?

No wait, I'm wrong! As brochure sites and as a research tool, we excel. The United Kingdom's National Archives site, and most especially the "Services for Professionals" section http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/services/?source=services is a wonder, and of course we have the at times magnificent records management listservs such as those I am aware of in the UK, the USA and Australia. And being information professionals, the Internet's power as a research tool is well understood.

Our brother and sister archivists, along with librarians, museum professionals and other curators, have done an excellent job of turning the Internet into a presentation, preservation and access tool. The pictures catalogues at the state and national libraries in Australia are a joy to behold http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/ .

However in our professional practice we are confused. We are all struggling with electronic records, struggling to make sense of and manage them, and struggling to regain control over the records spread throughout our organisations. And the point of greatest struggle - the lever to lift the records management world - is the classification system we adopt.