The records continuum model (RCM) is an abstract conceptual model that helps to understand and explore recordkeeping activities. It was created in the 1990s by Monash University academic Frank Upward with input from colleagues Sue McKemmish and Livia Iacovino as a response to evolving discussions about the challenges of managing digital records and archives in the discipline of archival science. The RCM was first published in Upward's 1996 paper "Structuring the Records Continuum – Part One: Postcustodial principles and properties". Upward describes the RCM within the broad context of a continuum where activities and interactions transform documents into records, evidence and memory that are used for multiple purposes over time. Upward places the RCM within a post-custodial, postmodern and structuration conceptual framework. Australian academics and practitioners continue to explore, develop and extend the RCM and records continuum theory, along with international collaborators, via the Records Continuum Research Group (RCRG) at Monash University.
Description The RCM is an abstract conceptual model that helps to understand and explore recordkeeping activities (as interaction) in relation to multiple contexts over space and time (spacetime). Recordkeeping activities span a time period encompassing multiple action structures within recordkeeping, including contemporary recordkeeping, regulatory recordkeeping, and historical recordkeeping. Through policies, systems, organizations, processes, laws, and social mandates, archivists and recordkeepers are able to appraise records in a manner which accounts for the record from the time period prior to its creation to its use in current recordkeeping practices. In a continuum, recordkeeping processes, such as adding metadata, fix documents, to enable them to be managed as contextual evidence. Records deemed as having continuing value are retained and managed as historical recordkeeping via the context of provenance, however, records which have no archival value are destroyed once they lose their administrative value. The implication of an RCM approach to archiving is that systems and processes establish records as both current and archival at the point of creation. The RCM can be visualized as a series of 4 concentric rings, or dimensions; Document Creation, Records Capture, The Organization of Corporate and Personal Memory and The Pluralization of Collective Memory intersecting with a set of crossed axes; transactionality, evidentiality, recordkeeping and identity. Each axis is labelled with a description of the activity or interaction that occurs at that intersection. Create, Capture, Organize and Pluralize, as the dimensions are referred to in short, represent recordkeeping activities that occur within spacetime. Activities that occur in these dimensions across the axes are explained in the table below:
The value of the RCM is that it can help to visualize where on the continuum recordkeeping activities can be placed. The continuum can then be used to explore conceptual and practical assumptions that underpin recordkeeping practices, in particular the dualisms inherent in the usage and practice of the terms "records" and "archives". This definition lends itself to a linear reading of the RCM – beginning with Create and working outwards towards Pluralization of recorded information. Another linear reading is to consider design first – the role that systems of Pluralization and Organization play in designing, planning and implementing recordkeeping and then considering the implications for Create and Capture. However, these are just two of many ways to interpret the model as the dimensions and axes represent multiple realities that occur within spacetime, any of which can occur simultaneously, concurrently and sequentially in electronic or digital environments, and/or physical spaces. By representing multiple realities, the RCM articulates the numerous and diverse points of view that contribute to records and archives including individual, group, community, organizational, institutional and societal perspectives. These contexts reveal the need to consider various stakeholders and co-contributors in relation to use, access and appraisal of records and archives. Over the lifespan of a record, multiple decisions are made by various stakeholders of the records that include, but are not limited to records managers and archivists. Other stakeholders can be identified at various dimensions of interaction, including those involved in providing information (not only the person or organization who produced or captured it), as well as their family and community. Records are therefore not simply physical or digital representations of physical objects held and managed in an archive or repository, but are evidence of multiple perspectives, narratives and contexts that contributed to their formation. The records continuum model is often described as being in contrast or at odds with the lifecycle records model. While the RCM is inclusive of multiple ways of conceptualizing and performing recordkeeping, including a lifecycle approach, there are some significant differences. While the lifecycle approach shows clearly designated phases in the management of records, a continuum approach conceptualizes these individual elements as continuous and not as discernable parts. Second, the lifecycle approach clearly identifies conceptual and procedural boundaries between current and inactive records. Current records are identified as "records" while inactive or historical records are identified as "archives." However, a continuum approach sees records management as an integrated process which crosses spacetime. This more temporal method of recordkeeping processes enables their use for multiple contexts and representations. What this means is that records are "in a state of always becoming...", able to contribute new contexts dependent on the differing perceptions and historical backgrounds of various stakeholders who are analyzing their contents. Archival records are therefore not just historical or fixed, but are able to be re-interpreted, re-created, and re-contextualized according to their place and use in spacetime. In this way, archival institutions are nodes in the network of recorded information and its contexts, rather than the end point in a lifecycle stage for records that are managed as "relics".
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