Records Management : Making the Transition from Paper to Electronic

by David W. Stephens

Book by David Stephens CRM

Genres: Nonfiction, School

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Dave Stephens is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. In 2012 he served as a program director in animal behavior at the National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the behavioral ecology of animal learning and decision making.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 1 out of 5]

How I learned that I don't want to be RIMMING for a living.

This is a terrible and pointless book. From calling people who don't believe the 'hype' of the future of a paperless office as delusional Luddites (but how do you account for the yearly increase in office paper consumption, even since the e-revolution, you glib little cheerleader of sloganeering and meaningless business practices? Oh, you don't because that is one fact you didn't give a footnote to, HA! caught you); to basically saying that everything would have been OK for Enron and Arthur Anderson if only they had created a schedule to throw out all that incriminating shit like they should have been doing all along (ethics anyone?). This book is mindless. It's full of corporate double-speak and really stupid acronyms, it makes reading Judith Butler or Derrida seem straight forward and lucid, and did I mention it pretty much thinks being an awful money grubbing opportunistic parasite of a company is all right? In the books defense it does think new laws holding executives accountable for what happens in their company (apparently pre-2002 I think the janitor could have been signing the quarterly earnings statements, ok, I'm fudging a little here, but only a little), but he does qualify this almost human regard for others by saying that it makes more jobs and prestige for RIM managers (Records and Information Management, managers, kind of redundant, yes?), and that if a company is properly Rimming or being Rimmed then all the shit should be cleared out before any lawsuits can come your way and demand the incriminating shit be produced and possibly hold the company responsible for being shit fucking assholes.

Ugh. I think that one is not supposed to go online and write things that could come back and bite you on the ass later on. Apparently the RIMMING community is pretty small, so I almost feel like I could be burning a bridge here. Well I learned in this class that RIMMING isn't something I care to do and that the messages of this book are just fucked. So I'm going to just light up the fucking flamethrower and burn this bridge to the ground.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were certainly parts of this that were insightful, particularly looking at it as documenting a historical period. I definitely learned some things. It was also interesting to see in what areas we have progressed in the past 12 years and what questions were still the same. Unfortunately, there was a lot of very time specific material that I ended up skimming because it was obsolete at this point or I'd learned about it in school already.

Still, ironically, the chapter on email, which was really the main reason for reading this book, was actually quite useful. Some of the specifics have changed, but we are still figuring it all out, so there wasn't as much that was out of date.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephens is a traditionalist. He uses this book to generally advocate the idea that the same conceptual ideas that have long been used on traditional paper records can be used on their digital cousins. I generally agree with the notion that records are defined by their content, not by their format. However, the volume of records and their informal nature tends to work against the traditional model. Especially when it comes to email, most workers simply do not see a benefit in applying taxonomy and retention schedules to the mass of messages that pass through their hands. At the same time, the technology is really not yet at a place to be a reasonable assistance.

This volume is a pretty good introduction to records management as a professional practice, and on the state of the industry and technology (as of 5 years ago). Any active practioner will need to look to journals and conferences to keep up with the moving technological target.

[Stacey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Out of date and out of touch with the IT world.

[Qristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13492295