Management of RecordsWhile recorded information created in the context of people’s lives and work serves many purposes, one of its essential functions is to serve to extend the limits of human memory, to be an enduring witness of events and activities. As records proliferate, keeping track of them and locating them when needed becomes itself a challenge to human memory. Management of records involves an interrelated combination of physical and intellectual techniques. For analogue records, the records are typically stored in a systematic hierarchical manner that reflects the functions, activities, and transactions they facilitate and document, combined with the use of labels and other metadata to facilitate the storing, retrieving, and ongoing use of the records. For digital records, file systems mediate the storage of digital files, most commonly using a hierarchical directory structure that is an analogue of the hierarchical storage of physical 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 with the physical or digital management of records with additional description of contexts.