Management of RecordsWhile recorded

Management of RecordsWhile recorded information created in the context of people’s lives and work serves manypurposes, one of its essential functions is to serve to extend the limits of human memory, to bean enduring witness of events and activities. As records proliferate, keeping track of them andlocating them when needed becomes itself a challenge to human memory. Management ofrecords involves an interrelated combination of physical and intellectual techniques.10 Foranalogue records, the records are typically stored in a systematic hierarchical manner thatreflects the functions, activities or transactions they facilitate and document, combined withthe use of labels and other metadata to facilitate the storing, retrieving, and ongoing use of therecords. For digital records, file systems mediate the storage of digital files, most commonlyusing a hierarchical directory structure that is an analogue of the hierarchical storage ofphysical files, including the use of directory and folder labels and other metadata.In order to establish intellectual control over records and facilitate, locate, identify, retrieve,and use them, however, it is necessary to augment the rudimentary metadata associated withthe physical or digital management of records with additional description of contexts.