A Critique of the Records Continuum Model
Minor Thesis
for the
Masters of Information Management
(Archives and Records Management)
by
Mark Koerber
Supervisor
Dr, Diane Velasquez
School of Information technology & Mathematical Science
University of South Australia
Adelaide, S.A.
October 2017
Disclaimer
I declare that this dissertation does not incorporate without acknowledgment any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any university, and that to the best of my knowledge it does not contain any materials previously published or written by another person except where the reference is made in the text.
Mark Koerber
October 2017.
Abstract
The Records Continuum Model has been a dominant theory in the Australian archival discourse for the last twenty years. During this time the Model has only received limited critical engagement. It is argued that the Model consists of broad theoretical structures or components, and can be analysed further as a set of theoretical propositions. Many of these propositions are examined, and it is found that all of them can be regard as contentious. The lack of critical engagement with the Records Continuum Model does not reflect its disputable nature within the archival discourse. This dissertation seeks to address the lack of criticism by offering a critique which focuses on those parts of the model which have not already received critical attention.
Contents / pageCHAPTER 1 Introduction / 5
CHAPTER 2 A methodology for a critique of the records continuum model / 15
CHAPTER 3 Literature review (Part one)
Critical engagement with the records continuum in the archival literature / 16
CHAPTER 4 Literature review (Part two)
The problem of personal records / 31
CHAPTER 5 A critical analysis of the theoretical propositions of the records continuum / 42
CHAPTER 6 Discussion / 59
CHAPTER 7 Conclusion / 61
Reference list / 62
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
A. What is the Records Continuum Model?
The Records Continuum Model isa theory about archives and records. Even though it is commonly presented as a model, it is much more than that, and may also be referred to as the records continuum theory. In this paper, “the records continuum” will be used as a shorthand to refer to it as both a model and as a theory. Where necessary, locutions along the lines of “the records continuum as a model”, “records continuum as a theory”, or “the records continuum diagram” will be used to indicate which particular aspect of the records continuum is being discussed.
How the records continuum should be best described is a challenge even for its proponents. In his 2012 overview Piggott observes that the records continuum has been variously characterised by its proponents as ‘a device, a tool, a paradigm, a theory, a metaphor, a model, a logical model, a space/time model, a space/time construct and a method of thinking’ (Piggott 2012, p. 183). These shifting conceptions probably explains why there are no comprehensive descriptions of the records continuum by anyone who is not a proponent or supporter of it. (For a refreshingly readable summary of the records continuum by a supporter, see Flynn 2001.)
Nevertheless, an attempt will be made to offer a description of the records continuum. The approach taken here to this problem reflects a general thesis presented in this paper, that the records continuum is a concatenation of various theoretical components. It will be argued that not all of these componentsare appropriate for every kind of archive (and record), or are all compatible with each other, or are even necessary to the overall concept of a records continuum.The schema which dissects the records continuum model and theory into its major theoretical components is set out as follows:
(i) The continuum
(ii) The record-keeping paradigm
(iii) The records continuum model diagram
(iii)Structuration theory
(iv)The concept of ‘spacetime’
(v) Paradigm shift and a claim to universality
(vi)An aspiration toward the postmodern
Together these theoretical components form the overall conceptual framework of the records continuum. Each of these theoretical components will be briefly described, its origins in the archival discourse identified, and its current status within records continuum theorydiscussed.
(i) The continuum
Proponents of the records continuumattributeto Ian MacLean and Peter Scott a kind of ‘proto-continuum’ (McKemmish, Upward & Reed 2010, p. 4449).The ‘proto-continuum’ was used by Maclean and Scott mainly as ‘a metaphor for expressing continuities between the work of record managers and archivists’ (McKemmish 2001, p. 339). The metaphor of the continuum is seen by proponents of the records continuummodel as a precursor to their conception of the continuum.
Another source for the continuum can be found in the criticisms of the life-cycle model. In brief, the life-cycle model sees the life-span of a record as a progression through distinct stages from creation to disposal. These stages are grouped into two phases: the first phase is the active use of the record by the creating agency; the second phase comes into play after the record has ceased to be of use to the creating agency (Atherton 1985, p. 44). The transition from the first phase to the second can be described as crossing an “archival threshold”, where records are transferred from the custody ofthe creating agency to the custody of an archive, Record managers have professional responsibility for the first phase of records, while archivists take over the responsibility once the records have been transferred across the archival threshold.
Criticisms of the life-cycle model point to its apparent inadequacies with respect to digital records. The stages of the life-cycle model are seen as not being separable in the case of digital records, since activities can recur out of sequence. Atherton (1985, p. 47) puts it thus:
Creation, for example is an ongoing process rather than an event in time. The record thus created is probably going to be altered a number of times during its administrative use. While most office automation systems may give the appearance of emulating a paper system, the data certainly is not processed in the same fashion.
The data which constitutes a digital record is distributed throughout a computer system, so it is difficult to envisage the record as passing through a series of distinct phases. Rather, Atherton argues, the life-cycle should be replaced by interrelated stages which reflect ‘the pattern of a continuum (Atherton 1985, p. 48). Like the ‘proto-continuum’, this continuum is seen by Atherton as a continuous succession of record management and archival processes (Atherton 1985, p. 51).
From these early “pre-Monash” notions of a continuum, the concept of therecords continuum model was developed.This conception of the records continuum sees all aspects of record management and archival processes as being interrelated and intertwined. There are no boundaries between these various aspects, for, as Upward puts it, a ‘continuum is a blurring of point’ (Upward 2004, p. 45). The records continuum is bound up with the other key features of RCM, such as ‘transactionality’ and the concept of ‘spacetime’. The continuum is, of course,the defining feature of the records continuum model.
(ii) The record-keeping paradigm
This can be characterised as a conceptual framework,partly developed by David Bearman (for an exposition, see Bearman 1994), which has had considerable influence on some archival theorists (Cumming 2015, p. 321). Among these theorists can be included the proponents of the records continuum. The phrase ‘record-keeping paradigm’ is taken from Harris (2005, p. 161), and will continue to be employed in this paper to conveniently refer to conceptions of records and archives which have to some extent been influenced by Bearman.(This is despite some misgivings about the word ‘paradigm’, but it should be noted that its use here is not intended to suggest that the record-keeping paradigm represents any kind of “Kuhnian” paradigm shift.)
One of the key features of the record-keeping paradigm is its conception of records in terms of function, evidence, and transaction, while emphasising context rather than content. In records continuum theory these become functionality, ‘evidentiality’, ‘transactionality’ and ‘contextuality’ (McKemmish 2005, p. 14).The terms rendered here in scare-quotes are only to be found in the RCM literature.
Another key feature of the record-keeping paradigm is that it rejects the notion of an archival threshold and advocates ‘post-custodialism’. The rejection of an archival threshold accords with the records continuum and the rejection of the life-cycle model. ‘Post-custodialism’ designates an approach which de-emphasises physical custody by archives(Upward 1996, p. 274), especially with regard to digital records. Post-custodialism envisages that archives will not necessarily be the final repositories of digital records, and that digital records can be retained in the record-keeping systems in which they were created, in a distributed custody approach.
The role of the archivist is also re-imagined in this post-custodial archival environment. Instead of just dealing with records after they cross the archival threshold, archivists are seen by the record-keeping paradigm as having more involvement with records’creation. To ensure that records have the necessary evidential values, captured in contextualising metadata, which give them their long-term archival value, archivists will need to intervene even before records are created. Since record-keeping systems need to also be archives, archivists will have to be consulted so that archival values are included in the system’s design. The active involvement of archivists in records creation has been called the ‘interventionist stance’ (Stapleton 2005, p. 39), and for convenience this locution will be used in this paper to refer to this facet of the record-keeping paradigm.
Another feature of record-keeping paradigm is that it de-emphasises the physicality of records. Instead records are defined by their ‘evidentiality’, ‘transactionality’ and ‘contextuality’, as indicated above.For the records continuum, this means a ‘focus on records as logical rather than physical entities, regardless of whether they are in paper or electronic form’ (Upward 1996, p. 276). The material aspects of records can be disregarded as these do not confer records their ‘recordness’ (McKemmish 2001, p. 351), and ‘records as conceptual constructs do not coincide with records as physical objects’ (McKemmish 1994, p. 200).
The final key feature of the record-keeping paradigm that will be considered here is the promotion the merging of record-management and archival roles into the new profession of ‘recordkeepers’. The first uses of the term ‘recordkeeping’ (rather than ‘record keeping’ or ‘record-keeping’) by proponents of the records continuum can be traced at least as far back to 1994 (see McKemmish & Piggott 1994, Reed 1994, and McKemmish 1994). The term ‘recordkeepers’ does not find its way into the lexicon of the RCM literature until some ten years later (see Reed 2005a), though it appears that ‘recordkeeping professional’ continues to be preferred.
The record-keeping paradigm continues to be integral to the records continuum model.The promotion of post-custodialism has faded from view in the last ten years, perhaps in recognition of the complexity of the issues involved with custody, distributed custody and non-custody. On the hand, ‘evidentiality’, ‘contextuality’ and ‘transactionality’ remain as some of the defining features of records continuum theory (McKemmish 2017, p. 141). The interventionist stance still finds favour with proponents of the records continuum. The terms ‘recordkeeping’, and,to a lesser extent,‘recordkeeper’ seem to have gained some currency in the archival discourse within Australia.
(iii) The records continuum model diagram
The diagram used to illustrate the records continuum as a model is normally presented graphically as a kind of ‘dartboard’ (Tough 2006, p. 5). Archival and related terms, along with records continuum theory neologisms, are laid out on a pattern of four concentric circles, and arranged along four orthogonal axes (see McKemmish, Upward & Reed 2010, p. 4450, and McKemmish 2017, p. 138, for the most recent definitive versions of the diagram). This complex graphical structure can be rendered more simply as a table, as the diagram actually functions as kind of mind map (though it is not supposed to be hierarchical, and it does not really delineate relationships). The table included below is based on the one Upwardpresented when he decided that diagram had ‘largely exhausted its original paradigmatic value’ (Upward 2005, p. 94).
Table 1.
Records continuum / Axes, or continua↓ / Dimensions
CAPTURE / CAPTURE / ORGANISE / PLURALISE
Evidentiality / Trace / Evidence / Corporate/
individual
memory / Collective
memory
Transactionality / Transaction / Activity / Function / Purpose
Recordkeeping
containers / (Archival)
document / Record(s) / Archive / Archives
Identity / Actor(s) / Unit(s) / Organisation / Institution
(iii) Structuration theory
Giddens’s ‘structuration’ theory is a social theory which is utilised in the early records continuum literature to broaden the theoretical scope of the records continuum (see especially Upward 1997). Without going into it too much, Giddens uses the notion of‘structuration’ to relate social structure to individual action, where one brings about the other simultaneously as they interact. Despite its prominence in the early expositions of the records continuum model by Frank Upward, ‘structuration’ theory does not appear to receive much attention from its theother proponents. In the more recent records continuum literature ‘structuration’ theory only receives a single passing mention, when it is noted that Upward ‘drew heavily’ on the social theory of Giddens in his initial theorising (McKemmish 2017, p. 137).
Given that the importance of ‘structuration’ theory within records continuum theory appears to have diminished, the theory and its relationship to the records continuum model will not receive any more attention in this paper. Suffice it to say that the initial reliance on ‘structuration’ theory by Upward in his early exposition was possibly misplaced. Despite its importance as a social theory, which addressed some theoretical problems within the field of sociology, Giddens’s ‘structuration’ theory is not without its critics. Even before the records continuum was fully articulated, ‘structuration’ theory was seen by many as ‘inapplicable in empirical research’, and that its ‘abstract level, obscure concepts, and neologisms weaken its fruitfulness’ (Kaspersen 2000, p. 163). As we shall see, these characterisationsecho some comments which have been applied to the records continuum model. Upward noted early on that there was an increasing number of critiques of ‘structuration’ theory, but that he had ‘not found time to read them in any depth’ (Upward 1997, p. 35). Some might say that was rather a pity.
(iv) The concept of ‘spacetime’
The development of the concept of ‘spacetime’ within records continuum theory, along with a critical examination of it, is dealt with at greater length below.For now, it just needs to be pointed out that ‘spacetime’ is conceived by Upward as not just another way of saying ‘time and space’, but is a separate, distinct concept (Upward 2000, p. 119). The concept of ‘spacetime’ is inspired by Giddens’s notion of ‘time-space distanciation’, but theattribution of the term ‘spacetime’ to Giddens by McKemmish, Upward and Reed (2010, p. 4454), and again by McKemmish (2017, p. 137), is not actually correct.
The concept of ‘spacetime’ can be regarded as a defining feature of the records continuum, despite most proponents usually avoiding the use of the term. For Upward, one of the advantageous that RCM has over the pre-Monash continuum is that it has a ’theoretical view of spacetime’ (Upward 2004, p. 56). Other proponents of therecords continuumeither ignore the concept of ‘spacetime’ or merely allude to it in passing, and only then in the context of an exposition of Upward’s ideas (see, for example, McKemmish 2017, p. 139).The equivocation over the centrality of ‘spacetime’ is not helped by Upward reverting to the locution ‘time/space’ in his diagram illustrating his notion of ‘archival time’ (Upward 2015, p. 336), otherwise known as ‘All is archiving’ (Upward 2017, p. 206). Since it is not clear what Upward means by these later notions, and that Upward recently wrote about ‘eddies in the spacetime continuum’ (Upward 2017, p. 198), it is accepted in this paper that the concept of ‘spacetime’ continues to have relevance to the records continuum.
(v) Paradigm shift and a claim to universality
More than twenty years ago it was argued by Cook that the bourgeoning of digital records was not something which merely required a ‘technological adjustment’, but represented a transformation of the archives and records profession (Cook, 1994, p.306). This transformation was, for Cook, ‘truly a ‘paradigm shift’’ (Cook 1994, p. 306). The idea was therefore abroad in the archival literaturewhenUpward overcame his ‘slightly cynical’ attitude and became a ‘full convert’ to RCM being just such a paradigm shift.(Upward 2000, p. 128).
Upward’s claim is unequivocal, declaring that ‘the continuum is a fully-fledged paradigm shift in which a worldview is being replaced’ (Upward 2000, p. 118). By ‘fully-fledged’ Upward means that the term ‘paradigm shift’ is not being used loosely or metaphorically, but in the sense of ‘Kuhn’s conceptualisation’ (Upward 2000, p. 117). Thatthe records continuum represents a paradigm shift ‘in Kuhn’s sense’, and is a ‘new worldview’, is also endorsed by McKemmish (McKemmish 2001, p. 333).
Along with the claim that the records continuum is a ‘worldview’ is the characterisation by Upward and McKemmish (2001, p. 26) of the continuum as a metanarrative:
The continuum has emerged in many ways of thought and has become a metanarrative of its own, a possible counter to the angst of the petit recits, to fragmentation and disarray.
The proponents of the records continuum argue that the ‘continuum approach’ is a ‘metaview of reality’ which helps can help us move to a ‘world of multiple ways of knowing’, where it seems differing points of view in the archival discourse can happily co-exist in some kind of holistic postmodern ‘archival multiverse’ (Upward, McKemmish & Reed 2011, p. 200). Within this ‘archival multiverse’, it seems that‘continuum thinking’ functions as a ‘form of consciousness’ (Upward, McKemmish & Reed 2011, p. 200, which canresolve any conceptual difficulties that critics may bring to bear on records continuum theory.
The universality of the records continuum is not only intellectual, but also practical. It can be applied to ‘an analysis of recordkeeping practices in any period of history’ (Upward 1997, p. 31). By implication, this applicability would extend across all contemporary archival practices and cultures as well.
The claim to universality has become one of the defining features of the records continuum, in whatever form it may take, and continues to be promulgated by its proponents. The latest form of the universality of the records continuum appears to be as a ‘metaview of reality’ functioning within an ‘archival multiverse’.