Managing Electronic Records: Methods, Best Practices, and Technologies

FOREWORD

This book is timely: There continues to be a strong need for comprehensive resources addressing the diverse issues and challenges of managing electronic records.

This need has grown over the twenty–plus years I have co–chaired the only national conference focusing exclusively on electronic records management (ERM). I am pleased to welcome and applaud Robert Smallwood's comprehensive book on managing electronic records as an excellent, profound information resource.

The need for this book is founded in the “sea change” that the management of electronic records has undergone—and continues to undergo—as society and business have moved full on into the digital age.

Consider just five of the component changes:

1.The historic function has evolved from materials management to risk mitigation.

2. An increasing focus on the broader tenets of information governance (IG).

3.The very nature of what constitutes records has expanded greatly to include metadata, e–mail, messaging, social media, cloud use—and it continues to evolve.

4. The volume of records being created and needing to be managed has grown exponentially.

5. The use of records to resolve legal disputes has expanded from primarily “proving the positive” to “proving the negative.”

Bottom line: The sea change resulting in the digitization of business records has created a whole new world regarding what is managed, why it is managed, how it is managed, and who is responsible for the management process. And increasingly, ...