Wanted: Records manager - No experience necessary

In this article the author "dissects" a vacancy announcement from a large North American state university seeking a records manager. Anyone who has ever applied for a records management position will find the analysis poignant-and amusing.

Not too long ago I came across a vacancy announcement for the position of Records Program Coordinator (one of the myriad of synonymous terms for Records Manager) at a large North American state university. Usually I pay no attention to such things because I am not interested in changing jobs. But in this instance I happened to read the announcement. Bad mistake. In a few short paragraphs, this university (which shall remain unnamed to protect the not-so-innocent) managed to epitomize everything that is wrong with the "profession" of records management today.

Rather than paraphrasing the announcement (with all the inherent risks of quoting out of context), the key paragraphs are reproduced verbatim (with the university name expurgated) below.

UNIVERSITY OF ... LIBRARIES

POSITION: Records Program Coordinator, Division of Special Collections and Archives.

DESCRIPTION: Under the supervision of the University Archivist, the Records Program Coordinator administers the University's Records Program. Responsibilities include implementation of a retention and disposal schedule for all University records; coordination of an ongoing educational program designed to provide current information regarding state and federal records regulations as well as University of ... records policies and procedures to all university departments and employees; assist university offices with issues relating to storage and retrieval of all non-permanent university records; working with the University Archives to assure that all permanent university records are transferred to the Archives in a timely and efficient manner, coordinating off-site backup for all non-permanent computer records generated by the university; coordinating reformatting policies, procedures, and activities for university records. Other responsibilities include supervision of one staff and student assistants and service on the Division reference desk.

QUALIFICATIONS: Required: A master's degree in Library Science from an ALA accredited Library School, experience working in records management preferred, good written and oral communication skills, and strong computer and information technology skills.

SALARY: $26,000 minimum

BENEFITS: Faculty status, 12 month appointment, 22 days annual vacation.

THE JOB

When one is considering a position in records management, it is a good idea to look at where, within the organization, the records management program is placed. In this instance, there is no records management program as the word "management" is never mentioned. It is, rather, a Records Program, which could mean anything-or nothing. This is not a question of picking at semantic nits. Managers often give short shrift to many of their responsibilities, but selecting a name for their organization isn't usually one of them. When the word "management" is absent from the designation, the function "management" is almost always absent from the responsibilities.

The Records Program is placed within the Division of Special Collections and Archives, and the Records Program Coordinator position is under the supervision of the University Archivist. The suspicions generated by the incomplete name are therefore enhanced considerably. If we were dealing with an institution of higher education in some third-world country which was still wrapped in the vestiges of colonialism, such a placement might be understandable. To this day, records management programs in England, and those throughout most of the countries that were formerly a part of its empire, still function under the archival umbrella. But this is a North American university. In North America it has been understood for almost half a century that archival preservation is but one phase of the records life cycle. For the records management function to be subservient to that of archives is completely backwards. If there is any hierarchical layering, archives should be under records management. A more pragmatic approach, perhaps, would be for the functions to be organizationally equal.

To compound the error, the Archives is a part of the Library. Yet an archives deals with historical record material and a library with non-record material. Admittedly, the "special collections" referenced are probably comprised of old and historically valuable books and manuscripts, but by definition those things are not records. To mix archives and libraries together is to confuse the functions of both and to do justice to neither.

Moving into the elements of the job, we find that the Records Program Coordinator is responsible for implementation of a retention and disposal schedule. There is no mention of schedule development. Where did the schedule come from? Was there some kind of knowledgeable administrative committee established to review recordkeeping requirements and determine organizational needs; was there an unknowledgeable committee of academics who sat around and pontificated on the issues; was it handed down by the state legislature (which would know even less than an academic committee); or did someone merely get a copy of another university's schedule and change the name on the cover? How is the schedule to be maintained? Records, like the organizations that create them, are in a continuous state of flux. Retention schedules must be periodically modified to reflect the reality of the moment.

Further responsibilities include assisting university offices with issues relating to storage and retrieval of non-permanent records. "Issues," of course, is a somewhat generic term. It might mean developing filing systems, and it might mean obtaining old documents from the records center. A records manager who does not develop retention schedules probably does not develop filing systems.

When he is not assisting with issues, the Records Program Coordinator gets to supervise one staff and student assistants. The "one staff (they don't even dignify the position with an official title) has doubtless worked in every office throughout the University and has finally landed in the records program where it is believed that he can do no harm. He is occasionally capable of performing the most mundane of tasks. The student assistants are most likely studying for their undergraduate degrees in political science or sociology or some other irrelevancy and dreaming about the day they will go to graduate school and get their MLS. They are thrilled to have the job--both because they need the money and because it's going to look great on their resumes when they apply to library school. They fully expect to be able to do their homework while on the iob.

Of course, our Coordinator does coordinate. He must coordinate an educational program, the transfer of permanent records, the back-up of non-permanent computer records, and the policies, procedures, and activities for all records. One might almost be impressed. I wasn't. Having been in the profession of records management for a very long time, it was once my lot to be saddled with the title "coordinator." It is a camouflage title-a nondescript designation that managers assign to positions they want people to overlook or ignore.

One area conspicuously absent from the above job description is records creation. There is no mention of forms, reports, directives, or correspondence, all of which involve the way the vast majority of records in use throughout almost all organizations come into being. To deal with recorded information after the fact (i.e., only at the storage and disposition stages) is to ignore the most significant contribution possible from a records management program. But then, there was no "management," was there?

QUALIFICATIONS

Lest you think that I have been unduly harsh in my assessment thus far and that this University really wants to find a records manager, let us review the qualifications for the position. Here is a large organization ostensibly looking for someone to administer a records program. One would think that records management expertise and, perhaps, even a Certified Records Manager (CRM) credential (this is, after all, an academic environment where credentials are revered) would be required. And yet we find that the primary qualifying criterion for the position is-a Master's degree in Library Science (MLS).

At the minimum, since the program is under the Archivist, you would expect them to be looking for a Certified Archivist (CA). A CA, while not a records manager, is at least cognizant of what records are. But no, the University wants an MLS. Since it is entirely possible for an individual to obtain an MLS without ever taking a course in records management (or a course in archival management for that matter), this is tantamount to the manager of the University's physical plant trying to fill a vacancy in the plumbing department by advertising for an electrician. Of course, it gets worse. Not only is a CRM credential not required, experience in records management is not required either-it is merely "preferred"!

When an organization advertises to fill a position and says that suchand-such a qualification is "preferred," they really have no serious hope of finding an applicant who meets the qualification, they just think it might be nice if such an individual came along. It costs nothing to throw the ersatz requirement in and, who knows, if there is another depression tomorrow and millions are out of work, they might just latch on to a qualified body. But this particular "preference" defies all logic. How is it possible to advertise for someone to run (or even to coordinate) a records program without specifically requiring that the person have experience working in the field of records management? We shall answer this question a little further on.

The applicant is expected to have strong computer and information technology skills. What are strong computer skills? Does that mean the ability to use a word processing program or does it mean the ability to write code? What are information technology skills? Does that mean one can be trained to retrieve information from an optical disc-based information system, or does it mean that one knows how to configure such a system? If the higher-level skills are what is expected, they're dreaming. People who can program and design systems are not looking for records management positions in libraries.

SALARY

If one were a new graduate with a Master's degree looking for an entry level professional records management position, $26,000/year might be a good salary. The job, however, if we are to take it at face value, is not entry level. Entry level people do not run programs. Although there is no mention of what the upper level of the salary range is, it is a good bet that it isn't $40,000. It probably isn't $35,000. If they want a records manager, it isn't enough.

BENEFITS

Faculty "status" is meaningless. Administrative types in academia are not academics and never will be considered as such. A 12-month appointment is completely ludicrous. The way the position duties and the position qualifications mesh together, it's going to take whomever gets hired longer than 12 months to learn what he's supposed to be doing.

READING BETWEEN THE LINES

It is almost a sleeper, but the phrase, "service on the Division reference desk," in the description section is perhaps one of the most telling in the entire announcement. Examining those few words in the context of what we've already discovered will show us what this Records Program Coordinator position really entails.

What is a reference desk? In a Division of Special Collections and Archives, the reference desk is the place where persons doing research come to ask for assistance in locating obscure data in old books and manuscripts. A knowledgeable individual who is familiar with the material in the library collections and archival stacks can provide invaluable help to researchers when working at a reference desk. An unknowledgeable person, on the other hand, is of no help at all-and might even be a hindrance. Every senior level librarian and archivist knows this. No senior level librarian or archivist would put an untrained person on a reference desk. To do so would be to risk alienating the researchers.

This is the era of the client. Total quality management and customer service are the buzzwords of the day and client satisfaction is the key to organizational survival. In this university library setting there happen to be two sets of clients: the internal clients who create and use the university records and thereby add to the overhead, and the external clients (mostly graduate students) who research the special collections and archives and thereby give the library/archives a sense of mission. As with Orwell's pigs, some clients are "more equal than others." If there is only enough manpower to support one group, the external clients are going to be supported.

There is, however, a catch. A unit providing a service to internal clients can often get operating funds (reimbursements, chargebacks, etc.) for doing so. Such funds are invisible to the persons expending them because the organizational bean-counters merely transfer the money from one column to the other in the accounting books. People who don't "see" the money they spend, don't "feel" it being spent either. There is rarely a serious complaint about payment from an internal client.

To get money from external clients, on the other hand, they must be charged fees. People don't like to pay fees, but they will do so as long as they feel they are getting adequate service. Interestingly, however, a client's perception regarding adequacy of service is often inversely proportional to the amount of the fee. That is, the higher the fee, the worse the client perceives the service to be-even if it's the same as it always was. The service that is acceptable at $3.00 is unacceptable at $4.00 and is positively awful at $5.00. To collect fees (which inevitably have to be raised) is to generate complaints and is, therefore, a losing proposition.

Essentially, what we can deduce by "reading between the lines" is that the Special Collections Division needed another librarian to work the reference desk and couldn't get approval for an additional position. In a stroke of inspiration equal perhaps to that of Archimedes observing water displacement in his bathtub, the Division Director (Archivist) decided to make a case for "doing something about the records problem" as a way to justify augmenting the staff. The Head Librarian, realizing all too well that there is a records problem (don't forget the aforementioned "issues"), bought the idea and the Records Program Coordinator position was created.

For perhaps 85 percent of the time, our Records Program Coordinator will function as a reference librarian serving external clients. The other 15 percent of the time will be spent on internal client matters-running errands to the records center, supervising the unsupervisable, coordinating records transfers, and basically doing just enough with the records program to ensure that the "issues" don't get out of hand. Although the internal clients will pay for the position, there is no intention of having the Records Program be more than it already is. The Vacancy Announcement is a sham.

AND SO...

I can prove none of what I've just written regarding this university's records program. I have never been there and have never spoken to anyone about it. The entire analysis is a result of my imagination working overtime, and it could be that I've put two and two together and come up with a glorious three. But somehow I doubt it. Having spent over three decades developing, operating, and evaluating records management systems and programs within the world's largest bureaucracy, a certain intuitiveness has been acquired. Sometimes you can just smell a rat.

Of course, one can find fake positions in most large organizations. There is nothing particularly sinister about this duplicitous announcement-except that it is the records management function which is once again being denigrated. We can do little about the situation except to continue working to improve the overall status of the records management profession. One day, perhaps, we will see a vacancy announcement for a librarian-when what is really wanted is a records manager.

AUTHOR: Ira A. Penn, CRM, CSP, is the Editor of the Records Management Ouarterly, a professional journal published by ARMA International. He is a Senior Management Analyst with the U.S. Federal Government and has over 33 years' experience in records and information management. In 1990 he was presented the Emmett Leahy Award for his contributions and outstanding accomplishments in the information and records management field.

Active in ARMA International at the Association level, Mr. Penn was the recipient of the coveted Award of Merit in 1985 and received the designation of Association Fellow in 1990. He is also active in the Institute of Certified Records Managers, served for eight years on its Board of Regents, and received the Institute's Award of Merit in 1992.

Mr. Penn is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. An accomplished writer, he won the prestigious ARMA Britt Literary Award in 1979 and is one of the principal authors of the Records Management Handbook, an international text published in London, England. A popular speaker, Mr. Penn is in demand for his thought-provoking, controversial, and down-toearth presentations.

Copyright Association of Records Managers and Administrators Inc. Jul 1996
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