Public Sector Records Management: A Practical Guide

Citation

Stephenson, M. (2008), "Public Sector Records Management: A Practical Guide", Library Review, Vol. 57 No. 9, pp. 744-745. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530810911914

Kelvin Smith is Head of the Accessions Management Unit of the National Archives, UK, formerly the public record office. He drafted the Lord Chancellor's Code of Practice on the Management of Records under Freedom of Information and has spent his entire career in public sector records management (RM) and has contributed to RM standards around the world and so is ideally placed to write this book: Public Sector Records Management: A Practical Guide.

This comprehensive hardback book is broken down into ten individual chapters. The first chapter “The RM function” introduces the concept of RM. Although introductory, this chapter is key as it outlines the fundamental RM principles, and goes over a little RM theory essential for a good understanding of the rest of the book. The next chapter is entitled “Compliance and regulation” and summarizes some of the different regulatory and legislative reasons why RM is so important ranging from the Public Rights Act 1958 to the Human Rights Act 1998.

The next three chapters cover three major areas of the work of records managers: “Record creation and classification”, “Records maintenance” and “Records appraisal”. Out of 219 pages, 112 pages of the book (i.e. not counting the appendices, index, etc.) are devoted to these chapters, over 50 per cent of the book.

This is unsurprising since what is contained within these three chapters is the very nucleus of what makes up RM. The first looks at the principles of RM: outlining the importance and understanding of business analysis and project management, and goes on to explain how to undertake information audits and build a file plan. The next chapter on records maintenance looks at the day‐to‐day management of records of all types covering storage and the conditions needed. There is a comprehensive section on business recover planning. The next chapter on records appraisal, surely one of the most difficult areas of RM, looks at the different methods of appraisal and retention (or as the book describes it, disposal) scheduling.

The sixth chapter on “Archiving”, although not truly RM, is the next stage in the lifecycle of records and so is useful in this book. Covered in this chapter is an introduction to archival services, including accession and arrangement, etc. as well as preservation and descriptions of key archival standards. Chapter 7 looks at “Access to records” and looks at the legislative framework under which access to records is provided for including the most important two laws in this area: the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts.

The eighth and ninth chapters discuss to skills and are entitled “Roles and responsibilities” and “Training and development”, the former looks at competencies, organizational responsibilities, staffing requirements and competency frameworks and the latter at training for staff within an organization as well as for records and information management staff. The final chapter is entitled “The future: developing an integrated programme”, and is a short but interesting exploration of what could be described as three current fashions in management – ongoing change in business processes, the change in culture from secrecy towards openness and a shift from the individual to the corporate and performance management.

There then follows a number of appendices, the first two being reproductions of the Lord Chancellor's Code of Practice on the Management of Records under Section 46 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Local Government Model Action Plan for compliance with the Code of Practice. A list of legislation and a bibliography follow.

In a relatively small number of pages, Kelvin Smith manages to pack in a huge amount of information, all highly relevant. Added to this is the fact that the book is generously provided with useful templates – a model policy in Chapter 1, in Chapter 3 a file plan structure and a couple of audit questionnaires and a model recovery plan in Chapter 4.

For an experienced records manager this book is likely to contain little new but would be a very good reference tool. However its strength, I believe, lies in its applicability to relative newcomers to RM: to the archivist or other member of staff asked to undertake a records audit, to a newcomer to the public sector or to a newly qualified or recently promoted member of staff, all of whom would be bound to find this book a real gem.