Why am I a Records Manager?

McLeod, Julie (2008) Why am I a Records Manager? In: Inaugural Professorial Lecture, 03 Jul 2008, City Campus East, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Preview

PDF - Presentation Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike. Download (1032kB) | Preview

Abstract

What links the National Insurance numbers of 10 million parents and carers; the personal details of 370,000 high street bank customers; information about nearly 600,000 people who had signed up to or expressed an interest in joining the UK Armed Forces and hundreds of documents from the Department of Work and Pensions? They have all gone missing, been dumped or stolen in the last six months.

In the light of data loss incidents such as these and estimates that our digital universe is expanding tenfold every five years, this inaugural lecture explores why managing records is essential in today’s global, networked electronic environment. It considers what it means to be a records manager, some of the challenges, beyond security issues and the sheer volume of information, that this environment presents and ways in which they are being addressed for a sustainable future.