Book review: viewing records as business objects.

TITLE: Domesticating Information: Managing Documents Inside the Organization

AUTHOR: Carol E.B. Choksy

PUBLISHER: The Scarecrow Press Inc.

PUBLICATION DATE: 2006

LENGTH: 250 pages

PRICE: $40

SOURCE: www.arma.org/bookstore

This book aims to move beyond the practitioners handbook to the theoretical considerations of managing records and information. To that end, author Carol E.B. Choksy attempts to provide executive management with insight into the business, process, and principles of records management and, therefore, its importance to the corporation. She also identifies academics in library and information science, archivists, and records managers as her audience. The book succeeds in engaging these latter groups, and there is still something here for the executive willing to forge through denser sections.

Choksy begins with the idea that information is ubiquitous, important, and inchoate. Nations, or at least political groups, fail when decisions are made based on insufficient information. The title of the book, Domesticating Information, is intended to reflect what people do with information--"capture it, add to it, copy it, refer to it, transmit it, retrieve it, make decisions with it, show it, describe it, organize it, study it, and manage it, among other things." The book argues the limitations of the approaches of library and information sciences, both of which focus on information as an element of culture; the former considers this in the area of museum and libraries, and the latter of scholarly collaboration and the use of information. Rather than emphasize these cultural elements, this book focuses on information as a tool with which to perform work.

In the introduction, Choksy spends some time distinguishing between a records manager, who is concerned with records as business objects, and the archivist. She likens the shock that many felt at Levi Strauss's observations of women as objects of exchange with an archivist's rejection of the idea that a record is a business object. This may be more dramatic than necessary; most archivists, though truly concerned with the collection, preservation, and provision of access to documents of culture, also appreciate that the volume of records generated for business-use only is high and that no more than roughly 5 percent of these records will be saved for the longue duree. Further, understanding that the record documents some business activity, it would be assumed that the record, then, is first and foremost a business object, and what is ultimately saved may also reflect business decision-making. This is the foundation of the role of records--the support of work--which Choksy so carefully analyzes.

The first chapter, "History of Records Management" offers a brief overview of records creation and use, tracing the evolution of documents to points of standardization. She relies on some key sources in outlining the rise of records management practices in U.S. businesses. She points to important scholars in the area, such as Joseph Litterer, Alfred Chandler, and JoAnne Yates, and follows up with a review of the rise of records management in the U.S. government. Citing Chandler's work, she indicates 1919 as the earliest use of the professional title for records management. As an academic exercise, a quick query to DuPont revealed records management, including its Hall of Records depository, in place by 1908. Nevertheless, Choksy covers impressive ground, beginning with records that were notches on a bone through today's challenges of electronic records.

In the second chapter, Choksy places records in a broader context, arguing that records management focuses on concepts that frame a document or record rather than the actual artifact itself. Thus, the content of the document or record must be captured in the framework of the overall organization. Choksy offers several examples of this imperative that will resonate with different audiences. There is a lengthy example of an online trading portal, and she offers a strong, relevant case study represented in the challenges of web interfaces. She offers others that might be more easily accommodated, such as case files, project files, and even the glove in the O.J. Simpson trial. Taken together, the range of examples, and their juxtaposition, are a little disjointed, but individually they illustrate and clarify the significance of capturing the context of a record.

Chapter three provides a realistic definition of "record" as required by law to manage. This chapter pays extensive attention to the myriad definitions of records and the thoroughness of the coverage--from outlining the range of offerings to discussing the nuanced differences--that will delight academicians. Choksy outlines the distinctive perspectives among various information professionals in useful, enlightening ways. The discussion and its conclusion broaden readers' consideration of a fundamental issue and challenge them to reconsider traditional definitions that many have accepted without question.

Chapter four asks: what records do we manage? Here Choksy underscores the context of a record as a complex object and focuses on the judicial elements of discovery and document production. This chapter contains useful, interesting information for both paper-based and electronic records management. Her insights on the international context of records management will likely appeal more to an academic audience and perhaps records managers responsible for international concerns, but general practitioners and administrators might find some of it distracting. The reader may have been better served had Choksy summarized points for the text and left supporting details to the footnotes.

In the fifth chapter, Choksy evaluates records life cycles as a business process. While offering a range of definitions and stages for the life cycle that will be useful to many, the key argument here is its potential benefit to the organization though effective management. Choksy covers important ground here and offers some thoughtful insight on process and planning throughout. For example, she effectively demonstrates the flaws in comparing an idealized paper-based world of records management against the electronic world to demand more from the latter.

Chapter six attends to the value of information within the organization and how records management enhances that value. Here risk-reward, particularly related to costs associated with mismanagement, are outlined as are legal compliance issues emanating from recent legislation. The author presents practical advice that will help more strongly position the program within the organization. She also challenges organizations to appreciate the difficulties information technologies pose in organizing records and suggests they become more adept, as a result, in responding to the demand for documents during discovery.

Choksy concludes with a call for practical skills and understanding rooted in the risks present in new information technologies--Blackberries, PDAs, and other devices--that allow for problematic data migration. More to the point, she emphasizes strategic skills, the abandonment of jargon, a keener sense of business cycles and processes, and a need for the profession to lead itself over its traditional deference to archivists. The bigger challenge is to train and change the workplace culture to enforce records management policies and procedures.

This is an ambitious book targeted at several similar, but also disparate, audiences. Throughout, Choksy hits the mark for each of them--though at varying points it takes each out of its comfort zone. While providing these audiences with useful information, Choksy serves the field well by offering a book that extends well beyond a practitioner's handbook.

Theresa R. Snyder is Deputy Director for Library Administration at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. The Hagley Library is an internationally regarded research facility specializing in the history of business, technology, and society; it holds inactive and historical records for more than 1,000 regional, national, and international corporations. Snyder previously served as Associate Director of Archives and Records Management at the University of Pennsylvania. She may be contacted at tsnyder@hagley.org.