Welcome to the third international issue of the Records Management Journal. This year the theme is education and training for records management which is a subject very dear to my heart. Not only is it the main focus of my teaching activity on a day to day basis but for many years it has been my principal research interest.
As an international issue dictates we have a wide geographic coverage as well as contributions from not only practising educators but also specialists in the field of professional development for records management. It is interesting to see, in the various articles, the same drivers for development and change in education and training provision but to note that they do not always lead to the same solutions.
Looking first at the articles from the educators, we begin with two from the United Kingdom. Elizabeth Shepherd from the School of Library, Archives and Information Studies at University College, London (UCL) takes partnership as her theme and explores four imaginative and innovative ways in which UCL has worked with others, both inside and outside the higher education sector, to develop and provide education and training for records professionals. Her presentation is mainly UK-focused but she does embrace a wider international perspective in the work she has been doing with the International Records Management Trust.
Sarah Westwood from the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies (LUCAS) picks up the UK focus. Unsurprisingly she shares with Elizabeth a vision of the current state of archives and records management. However she concentrates on establishing the records management education agenda for Liverpool by examining the drivers for change coming from the wider national and international context. It is particularly interesting to read about the philosophy and rationale behind the evolution from the Master of Archive Administration to the Master of Archives and Records Management. Another important element in the equation for LUCAS is the records management research agenda which appears as a leitmotiv throughout this whole international issue.
Returning to the partnership theme, the next article is a `joint effort' by a group of four educators from across Europe, thus most appropriately reflecting the collaborative nature of the project in which they are involved. It describes the RECPRO (Developing European Records Management Programmes) project which is funded by the European Union's SOCRATES programme and which brings together an archives or records management specialist from the library and archives schools in the University of Tampere, the University of Amsterdam, the Fachhochschule Potsdam and my own institution, the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. In the first year the project team has developed the draft curriculum which is outlined and explains the plans to evaluate the programme in each of the different institutions in the second year.
The final educator contribution suitably comes from Australia which leads the world in many areas of records management development. Margaret Pember from Curtin University of Technology portrays the rise of the `new age' records management professional and explores the implications for the provision of education and training. She singles out the impact of the records continuum model which eliminates the separation between archives and records management and the advent of AS4390, the Australian records management standard which forms the basis of the international standard now under development. The Records and Archives Competency Standards, which were launched in 1997, provide a valuable benchmark for the wide range of skills and knowledge needed for the new generation of recordkeeping professionals and as such are informing the development of education and training. Building on Australia's long tradition of flexible delivery of education and training the archives and records management community, encompassing educational institutions, practitioners and professional associations, are working together to support the development of recordkeeping professionals for the new age.
The education and training situation in Sub Saharan Africa is described for us by Peter Mazikana from Zimbabwe. As well as setting the scene in terms of current provision he explains the innovative training methodology introduced by his consultancy. The training of staff constitutes an integral part of the consultancy project and thus facilitates ’controlled change“ with the staff themselves owning and implementing the change through their newly developed skills and knowledge.
The final contribution is the opinion piece with which the issue begins. J Michael Pemberton who is an expert on professional development in records management and who, we are delighted to announce, has just agreed to join the editorial board of the Records Management Journal, focuses on the development of records management as a profession. Education and training plays a major role in the emergence of any profession and he draws on parallels, particularly in the medical field, that chart the next stages for records management in its quest to raise its status. He raises many issues such as the necessity for partnership, the importance of curriculum design, the criticality of having a research agenda with associated outputs and the possibility of a system of professional certification, taking the example of medical records administrators, as an alternative to formal education programmes for records professionals. With his broad vision on an international scale he provides a most suitable context for the articles in the international issue. Items for review are currently in short supply. The item reviewed in this issue is an important publication and has been very welcome to colleagues working with public records.
I hope you find that this international issue helps to give you a picture of what is happening across the world in terms of education and training. It needs to be an ongoing process, as many of our contributors highlight, so I am sure we shall be coming back to it as a topic again and again. It would be interesting to hear of developments in other parts of the world not covered here and I would encourage you to send us items on this or indeed on any other topic which is relevant to the records professional today.
For the next international issue the theme will be research which features in many of the articles in this current issue. We would welcome articles in general on the concept of research, what research means within the field of records management and specifically about particular research projects which are either under way or have been completed. If you would like to contribute an article we would be pleased to hear from you at an early stage. Details about submission and deadlines are included in the call for papers at the back of this issue. We look forward to hearing from you.
Catherine Hare and Julie McLeod