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
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