Editorial

Citation

McLeod, J. (2005), "Editorial", Records Management Journal, Vol. 15 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2005.28115aaa.001

Editorial

The first issue of 2005 is particularly exciting to introduce, not only because of the quality and range of its content but also because it marks the first issue published under the auspices of the new Editorial Advisory Board and contains a number of significant changes.

Having announced the expansion of the Editorial Advisory Board in the last issue I promised to include details of the new Board members in this issue. You will find the full Editorial Advisory Board listed at the beginning of this issue and on the journal web site at www.emeraldinsight.com/rmj.htm.

The new Board members have already been taking an active part in the journal’s development including planning future issues, contributing to this issue and refereeing new submissions. In addition, the Board has reviewed the aims of the journal and agreed upon the following:

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  a forum for the dissemination of scholarly articles, professional practice, research reports and critical reviews in records management;

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  a link between research and scholarship and reflective professional best practice so that both are informed and enhanced; and

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  a link between research, scholarship and practice in records management and other relevant disciplines.

I am confident that the new members’ contributions and international networks of contacts will take the journal forward in a very positive way and make it a truly international journal in the field which makes a significant contribution to the discipline.

One change you will already have noticed is to the format. This is a change planned by the publisher Emerald and we hope you like the new size, cover and layout. Another change is the renaming of the reviews section to “Professional resources” to better reflect its extended coverage to include not only book reviews but reviews of other guides, electronic resources, including web sites, research projects and significant national, international and professional conferences. Catherine Hare has volunteered to be the Professional Resources editor so, if you plan to attend a conference or have used a new resource and would like to review it then please contact her. And if you are a student then you might like to start your publication record by writing a review.

And so to the content of this issue. It opens with the opinion piece on a potentially controversial topic – the nomination of a new Archivist of the United States of America. Written by two of the new Board members who are internationally well known and respected, Rick Barry and Mike Steemson, the article is based on facts but asks some very searching questions and raises some interesting questions. It documents the events surrounding the nomination, which have not, to our knowledge, been recorded in one place before. The authors explore the challenge of making such a significant and powerful appointment. At the time the authors wrote the article John W. Carlin was still in post, Congress had adjourned until the new year and the nomination of Professor Allen Weinstein as new US Archivist had not been confirmed. However, in February Professor Weinstein’s appointment was confirmed.

We then have three longer articles rather than the more usual four articles. Elizabeth Man, the Record Manager for the National Patient Safety Agency and also a new Board member, makes a very important contribution with an article on the Agency’s functional approach to appraisal and retention scheduling. She demonstrates how theory can be successfully applied in practice by sharing the appraisal methodology, survey and scheduling techniques as well as data analysis and presentation from a recent pilot project. She reflects on the lessons learned and how they are influencing retention policy and practice. There is much of practical value, based on robust theory, for other professionals to adopt and/or adapt.

As I write this many organisations in the UK are busy making final preparations for the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 fully implemented on 1 January 2005. It is therefore very timely that we publish Lorraine Screene’s article on the state of preparedness of public bodies for freedom of information legislation. Lorraine, Assistant Archivist at the British Library of Political and Economic Science, assessed four organisations – a local government authority, a national museum, a police force and a university – as part of a Master’s research project approximately six months prior to the Act’s full implementation. She shares key aspects of the results relating to leadership, training, records management, customers and systems and procedures. The results reveal a range of different approaches and attitudes to the legislation and hence different states of readiness.

In contrast the management of email is a challenge for organisations anywhere in the world and yet few studies appear to have been conducted and reported upon. To begin to address this gap the second article is a contribution from three authors based in Singapore – graduate student Bee Bee Seow, Assistant Professor Ramaiah Chennupati, and Professor Schubert Foo, all based in the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University. The article is based on Seow’s Master’s project which surveyed a range of financial, government and IT organisations about their email management practice. It reveals that whilst emails are recognised as official records and potential knowledge assets in many instances and that some organisations do have email policies and guidelines more attention needs to be paid to training staff to manage their emails. The authors share some very interesting statistics on the daily average time spent on managing emails and translate the time spent on managing spam mail into lost productivity – the figures are alarming.

The issue closes with the new Professional Resources section which contains a review by Bob McLean of BIP 0025 Effective Records Management Part 3: Performance Management for BS ISO 15489 by Philip Jones, the third in the series published by British Standards Institute, and two conference reviews. Alistair Tough makes his first contribution as a Board member by reviewing The Society of Archivists’ Conference held in Glasgow in September 2004 and I conclude with a review of the International Council on Archives’ 15th International Congress which took place in Vienna in August 2004.

Please do share with us your reactions to the content of this issue and the changes to the journal and consider making a contribution yourself for a future issue.

Julie McLeod