Book Review: Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World

Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World

By Steve Bailey. London: Facet Publishing. 2008. 172pp. Hardcover. $115.00. ISBN: 978-1-85604-641-1.

About the Author

Steve Bailey has worked in the records management field since 1997 after receiving a Master’s degree in Archives and Records Management from University of College London. He started as an Assistant Records Manager for Pfizer and has served as the team lead in the Archives and Records Management team at the University of Gloucestershire and the Records Management team at JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) before taking the position as the Senior Advisor at JISC infoNet. He is currently serving as the Senior Advisor of Records Management at JISC infoNet for a fifth year. Steve specializes in providing future directions for records management. He has published over sixty journal articles and conference papers and has presented at various institutions including Information and Records Management Society (IRMS) (IRMS, 2011; Bailey, n.d.; LinkedIn, 2011).

Summary

In his book which is divided into three parts, Bailey takes a step by step approach to show the readers the need for radical changes in records management. In the first part, Bailey describes the ways in which we create, use, store and manage information have changed with technology advancements. Bailey correctly depicts the current picture in which Office 2.0 tools are enabling businesses to collaborate across organizational boundaries and Web 2.0 tools are enabling organizations to reach out to their customers using a variety of content formats. Bailey shows the exciting and boundless possibilities that can be achieved through new technology tools and at the same time he shows the depressing picture of current records management practices that is unable to process the amount of records being created, the variety of file formats or the records distributed on servers of various Web 2.0 service providers. Bailey urges his readers to seriously examine the current records management practices under which some records managers conveniently hide and ignore all information other than the few that still remain in the traditional record formats.

In the second part of his book, Bailey shows that there is still a need for appraisal, which is the first and the most difficult step in records management and archiving. He does so by showing how random selection and save-all approaches do not work for many types of records including the ones containing personal information that must be identified and destroyed. In addition, Bailey briefly discusses how the current approaches to appraisal are not scalable or ignore the record creators and users on which records management of the future must be centered and built, according to Bailey. Bailey establishes that there is a real need for a new appraisal approach in discussing the shortcomings of these current approaches before discussing his ideas for the future.

In the third part, Bailey finally presents his ideas on how records management should change by providing ten guiding principles for records management of the future, which he names “Records Management 2.0.” These principles focus on scalability and flexibility that can be applied to ever increasing information in all content formats, technology and location independence and extensibility that can absorb changing demands of the field. In addition, Bailey’s ten guiding principles include the principles of Web 2.0 tools that have resulted in their popularity. These include the ability to offer positive incentive for users to participate and to be marketable to end users. Bailey also does not forget the decision makers, stakeholder and records managers in his principles.

Reaction & Weaknesses

Despite the book’s long foreword that clarifies the purpose of the book, the ending of this book is disappointing because the author builds up the expectations of the readers throughout this book. By questioning and discussing every detail related to the problems in records management, the readers come to expect the same level of detail with his proposed solution. However, the conclusion of the book that presents the core ideas of the author is tremendously shorter than the rest of the book, includes very little detail and includes nothing that has not been already discussed or hinted in the previous chapters.

The author seems to be as narrowly focused on Web 2.0 as the records managers that he criticizes. Records Management 2.0 already sounds outdated as the benefits of initial implementations of Semantic Web technologies, also known as Web 3.0, have already been achieved (W3C, 2009f; W3C, 2008a). Bailey is too caught up with Web 2.0 tools that he fails to recognize other technology developments related to information management and folksonomies, which he recommends as a solution to the current problems. He fails to mention any of the flaws and advantages of using folksonomies or any technical detail to convince his readers that his principles can be implemented and achieved in reality.

Strengths

The details of the problems included in this book are also the strengths of this book. The author provides enough description of the problems to completely convince his readers of the need for change. Although Bailey does not mention any technologies other than Web 2.0, Bailey’s guiding principles are actually being supported and implemented in related fields. Efforts to implement one linked Web of data including the data within the “deep Web” have started through Semantic Web initiatives that include the Linked Data initiative (Linked Data Community, n.d). The idea to mash the characteristics of Web 2.0 tools with another technology is already popular in semantic tagging, semantic wikis and semantic blogs. The need to be marketable to users, decision makers and stakeholders has always been recognized in records management, especially in implementing Electronic Records Management Systems. Even though the author does not mention these to support his principles, professionals in the information management field will be able to recognize that Bailey’s principles are related to these efforts.

Comparison

Bailey’s ideas are also related to the ideas of other authors. He holds similar ideas as Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody. Both authors are opponents of predefined taxonomies (Shirky, 2005) and both believe that the power is being shifted away from hierarchical structures to the individuals (Shirky, 2008). Weinberger also voices his opinions against predefined classifications in Everything is Miscellaneous (2007). Bailey’s idea of using user reviews and user behavior to determine the perceived operational value and retention schedule, that can change over time as more user reviews and behavior get incorporated, is similar to the concept of dynamic metadata that Weinberger presents in his book. Bailey was able to apply the ideas of these two well known authors directly to records management in his book.

Most records managers and knowledge architects are still skeptical about using user generated tags. Susan Cisco notes that there has not been any successful use case of folksonomies in enterprises yet. Cisco believes that taxonomies are still more reliable (2011). Reamy recommends a hybrid solution that builds taxonomies using research information based on user generated tags in his article (Reamy, 2010). Reamy’s solution sounds more convincing than Bailey because Reamy uses a technical approach in presenting his ideas and reviews the pros and cons of folksonomies and taxonomies. When folksonomies will be implemented in an actual records management tool or practice and be approved by records managers is unclear but Bailey’s ideas are sure to start a discussion.

Author’s Thesis

The author seems to believe that using user generated tags, user reviews and interfaces similar to Del.icio.us and Amazon with records managers acting as quality controllers will result in almost infinitely scalable records management tools and practices with high usage and high quality management. He provides an idealistic picture without mentioning the problems with user generated tags which are known to have very little reuse. User reviews can be useful in identifying the perceived operational value of records and user generated tags can be useful in identifying the current buzz words. However, it seems overly optimistic to assume that user generated tags can be used to manage information, controlling retention and access, to meet the regulatory and legal requirements and operational needs of organizations. It seems even more overly optimistic to think his readers will be convinced without providing more detail.

Significance & Usefulness in the Discipline

While it is still unclear how Bailey’s ideas will be implemented record management, Bailey’s book serves as a critical self examination of the records management discipline. Despite the lack of concrete detail for the proposed ideas, Bailey is able to urge and convince his readers of the need for radical changes that are long overdue. His book serves well as a wakeup call to records managers that still need to be reminded of the seriousness of the problems in records management and of the principles that should guide implementation of potential solutions. In addition, Bailey urges records managers to have a broader view and to embrace management of all information, not just records. Bailey’s ideas are still at infancy and lacks details even in his 2009 article (Bailey, 2009) but when his ideas are incorporated with the recent developments in related technologies, his principles will allow records managers to quickly adopt the new technology tools in records management.

References

Bailey, S. (2009). Forget electronic records management. It’s automated records management that we desperately need. Records Management Journal, 19 (2), 91-97.

Bailey, S. (n.d.). Steve Bailey: About me. Retrieved from http://www.blogger.com/profile/12352969237682900197

Cisco, S. (2011, January 3) Tagging electronic records: There is no onomy in folksonomy. Retrieved from http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/Tagging-Electronic-Records-Theree28099s-No-e28098onomye28099-in-Folksonomy

Information and Records Management Society. (2011). Steve Bailey, JISC infoNet. Retrieved from http://www.irms.org.uk/conference-speaker/45/steve-bailey

JISC infoNet. (2011). JISC infoNet: About the service. Retrieved from http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/about-the-service

Linked Data Community. (n.d.) Linked Data. Retrieved October 19, 2010 from http://linkeddata.org/

LinkedIn Corporation. (2011). LinkedIn: Steve Bailey. Retrieved from http://www.linkedin.com/in/sjbailey

Reamy, T. (2010, December 1). Folksonomy folktales 2010. Retrieved from http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/PrintArticle.aspx?ArticleID=71998

Shirky, C. (2005) Ontology is overrated: Categories, links and tags. Retrieved from http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin.

W3C. (2009, November 12). W3C Semantic Web frequently asked questions. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ

W3C. (2011). Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLS) Interest Group. Retrieved from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/

Weinberger, D. (2007). Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. New York: Holt.

http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins/2011/2011-02.html

How Twitter is used by archives

In the fourth week of LIBR 285 course, we were asked to find an example of an archive that uses Twitter well to communicate with its patrons.

I looked up Internet Archive and Computer History Museum (in Moutain View, CA).

The links are:

http://twitter.com/#!/internetarchive

http://twitter.com/#!/ComputerHistory

The Internet Archive has 8904 followers, definitely not as many as Smithsonian Archive but definitely a lot. Computer Hisotyr Museum also has a good number of followers - 3405. The Internet Archive seems to be using Twitter to promote its collections. Many of the tweets point to news articles and blog posts that talk about launch of new collections and many directly point to the collections on the Internet Archive Web site. I am sure the Internet Archive is trying to reach out to the general public especially with tweets that talk about their collections related to 9/11 coverage. Somewhat humorous tweets such as "I can't be the only one who thinks that having a teapot in your bedside table is an excellent innovation! http://bit.ly/pr6yEq" seem to be tapping into the curiosity of the general public.

The Computer History Museum also is reaching out to the general public and is promoting its collections by tweeting about its new collections. Since it's also a physical museum, it also uses Twitter to promote special events and discounts for museum visits. I can't imagine microblogging about special events, collections and newsletters once or twice a day could take that long but the little post on Twitter goes out to thousands of followers. So I think it definitely is a very efficient way of marketing.

BTW, I'd created Twitter account a while back when I was talking LIBR 240 but haven't really used it much since then. As soon as I logged in, I tried to look for some friends but haven't found that many. More are on Facebook but I do definitely see the benefits in following some of the professional organizations. Here's my account: http://twitter.com/#!/jungahlee, if anybody's interested!

Corporate Archives

I have thought about working in a business/corporate archive. I personally don’t think it will be greatly different from working at public archives. I do realize that there will be differences… At corporate archives, I would might be archiving some records that promote their brand rather than focusing on the research value of the records. I might even be asked to destroy records that hurt the corporate brand. But, I think corporations are a part of our history and many make innovations and revolutions. Think of how much change has been brought on by various technology companies these days.

With the increase in the amount of information and the distributed model in which information is being created and stored, it does not seem possible for public institutions to keep up with all of the information that is worth saving. Some records that are worth archiving might only be accessible by internal employees and thus, they are the only ones that can save such records. I think we need every corporation to do their part to save whatever they can. Even though the corporate archives may present a biased collection of records, without corporate archives, we may end up with nearly no history of some corporations.

Unfortunately, I think the reality is that many companies do not focus much on archiving their history. Most are too caught up with day to day business and are already short on resources without having to worry about saving corporate records. The fact that a whole section is dedicated to provide sources of funding for corporate archives on Managing Business Archives (http://www.managingbusinessarchives.co.uk/getting_started/setting_up_an_inhouse_archive/sources_of_funding) seems to imply that many corporations do not have the funding or the resources to set up or maintain corporate archives. Only the well established companies with long history seem to be on SAA’s directory of corporate archives.

For corporations, I think archiving starts from records management. Managing Business Archives (http://www.managingbusinessarchives.co.uk/getting_started/sustaining_the_archive/) states on Sustaining the Archive section, that “the records management process also identifies current business records that will have archival or historical value in the future. Implementing a records management programme can enable your business to capture new accruals of archives, keeping the corporate archive collection up-to-date and dynamic” (2011, para 2). As the amount of information created by corporations has exceeded the amount that is easily manageable by a centralized records management department, we may be needing to count on every individual to save their records for the corporate memory to survive.

Measuring effectiveness of social media efforts

I find marketing a bit difficult to grasp but it is becoming increasingly important for libraries and information organizations because there is more competition but less money. Social media seems like such a cost effective way for marketing. Although the service might be free, keeping social media sites upto date and interesting to get readers engaged takes effort. But are the efforts paying off?

I had to read around a bit. It looks like a good place to start for this topic is "How to measure your nonprofit’s social media success" on Socialbrite. This article says that to measure effectiveness of social media efforts for any organization, we have to go back to the organization's mission. Just like we learned in LIBR 204, start with the mission, plan out the strategic objectives and strategic goals for each objective. The article tells readers to ask ourselves: "Have I clearly formulated a set of goals to advance my organization's strategic goals?" (para 4). Only when the goals have been clearly formulated, can we move onto formulating measurements.

For taking measurements, I liked the article titled "Five Simple Ways Nonprofits Can Measure Social Media ROI " because it doesn't just talk about the tools or the numbers. I thought it was one of the articles that actually linked the missions of the organizations with what we can do on social media sites. For example, an obvious goal of marketing is to get donations. So social media tools should be used in our efforts to turn supporters of our organizations into donors. The article recommends a poll to ask donors "what communication tool inspired them most to donate" (para 10). Same thing with volunteers. The article tells readers to ask the audience of social media sites to volunteer for specific events. It tells us not to assume that people will volunteer by having a generic "volunteer" link. It says that we need to ask people to volunteer for specific events with good reasons why they should volunteer. Then, we should ask volunteers what motivated them to volunteer to see if anything on our social media sites inspired them to volunteer. Another method recommended in this article is to track how much traffic on library's Website came from social media sites. Most libraries' Web sites are online resources. Thus, a visit to the library's Web site that was initiated from a social media site is a clear indication of increased usage of library resources resulting from efforts put into social media.

Of course the volunteers and the donated money have to be put into proper use to meet the mission and the objectives of the organizations but I thought these two ways to measure the success of marketing efforts put into social media tools were great compared to just looking at whether the number of followers and subscribers went up. Of course those numbers are also important and it is important to see which or your Tweets are being Retweeted and which blog postings are being recommended as suggested by Beth Kanter in her article titled "Using Metrics To Harvest Insights About Your Social Media Strategy" but if the library is in the online "conversation" but the coversation is not resulting in more support (both monetary and in volunteer hours) and more usage (both virtual and physical) then the social media efforts don't seem to have hit "success level" yet.

Here Comes Everybody and Everything is MIsc.

For one of my courses, we were asked to compare book reviews on two different books: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky and Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger. Although I did not buy these two books, we were introduced to these books in a number of ways. We read book reviews and the course instructor included the main points of the books in her lecture.

I partially agree with the point in Shirky's book, that recently people organize themselves rather than organizations doing the organizing. I can see how it is easier to get together with people with a common interest using new technology but people have been getting together with others that have the same interest. Thus, I can’t agree that this is a new behavior but it is true that thanks to these tools, more people can come together to form larger powers and it is important for archivists to recognize the significance of online tools that are being used to bring people together.

I totally agree with the second point in Shirky's book, that with the current technology, especially Web 2.0 tools, about everyone that has access to these tools can play a part in the traditional roles in information cycle including publishing, creating, distributing, organizing, evaluating, and so on. The amount of information has long exceeded the amount that can be organized and evaluated just by library and information professionals. Thus, it totally makes sense for everyone to be contributing. While it seems obvious that having the “nonprofessionals” or the “lay people” participating in these activities will result in a complete chaos, something like Wikipedia shows that the works of nonprofessionals have not resulted in choas. (Despite some of its errors, it seems to be becoming a fairly reliable resource, and a very large resource too.)

For the book “Everything is Miscellaneous,” it seems like the main point of this book is that information does not need to be classified. It seems like he is saying if we impose a static classification and metadata onto the information, our biases and limitations of views get reflected on them, thus limiting discovery and use of the information in many ways. As this week's lecture discusses how the use of metadata increases the likelihood that a piece of information will get discovered and used, it was refreshing to read about how it can also hinder discovery and usage.

As the amount of information grows exponentially, we've already moved away from centrally trying to classify and to catalog information but I am not sure if it is wise to leave it upto the users. Will there be enough driving force from the information users to create tools to enable them to discover and locate relevant and specific information within a information world that is completely unorganized? How will Google evolve and will Semantic Web technologies provide some sort of solution? These are the questions that come to my mind.

Also, as the amount of information grows, how will information creators make sure that the information that they publish will get found and viewed over all the other competition? Will it be the information creators or the information users that will be the driving force to create some kind of solution to locating relevant or specific information in the chaos? This is another question... Only questions after questions arise as I am discussing these books.

My Voki - for Halloween

Hi!

I've used Voki before and my daughter who was in 2nd grade back then loved it too. She still plays around with it. The first one that she created was a dog. It's really easy to use.

Here's the one that created today. It turns out to be the default one that was on the edit screen but since it's October, I wanted to do a witch. It was tricky to find a voice that matched a witch. Maybe I should've done my own voice :)

Records management futurewatch

Records management future watch is a blog of Steve Bailey, the author of "Managing the crowd: Rethinking records management for the Web 2.0 world."

I chose this book for the book review assignment because I am interested in records management. I haven't finished it but based on what I've read, it seems like he is supporting "save all" theory. He keeps saying that traditional methods of records management will not work with the volume of information we have... I think it is true that the volume of information has long exceeded the level that can be processed by humans... so how are we to distinguish what is a record and what is not... and if we cannot even pick out the records from the vast amount of content that's out there, how does records management begin?

Hopefully, this book will provide some answers but based on the foreword and intro, it sounds like this book won't provide any answers... in which case it will be kind of a disappointment...