This thesis begins by tracing the development of the
practice of records scheduling in the federal governments of
United States and Canada, from the initial concern with records
disposal in the late eighteen hundreds, to the implementation of
formal records schedules in the 1940s in the United States and
the late 1950s in Canada. These federal initiatives provided a
model for later developments at the state and provincial level.
However, changes in scheduling methods have lately become
necessary to meet the demands of the increasing volume of
records, organizational complexity and change, and the
widespread use of new media, particularly electronic records.
Many of these changes have occurred at the provincial and
state level, where the limited size of government has allowed
the agencies responsible for scheduling to be more responsive
and innovative. For this reason, analysis of current records
scheduling practices in the provinces of British Columbia and
Ontario, and the states of Washington and New York were
conducted. These studies reveal schedules which are both
flexible in their use and adaptable over time because they
attempt to accommodate both records in all media and
organizational change. Among the scheduling techniques examined
are the addition of media specific elements, the use of
functional schedule arrangement, the integration of schedules
with other management tools, like classification, and the
expanded use of general schedules for records common to more than one organization. These techniques are capable of dealing
with the volume, complexity and variety of records which are
being created in government today. Despite the changes
demonstrated, the studies show that records scheduling remains
a viable practice to control the life cycle of all records, from
creation until disposal.
Throughout this investigation, the role of archivists is
discussed. Archivists' involvement in scheduling began with the
earliest developments and continues still today. Archivists have
been central to the initiation, development and adaptation of
records scheduling in government. With the development of new
information technologies, archivists' role is even more
important, for they must intervene into the process of records
creation if they want to maintain the ability to identify
records of enduring value to society, and to ensure that their
integrity is maintained throughout administrative procedures and
use.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/4948 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Mohan, Jennifer Alexandra |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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