What it means to be a user in records management, and what it means for professionals to have users.

It means to use something built by a professional.

We have to rememebr this, because the vast majority of records best practice is developed by professionals for professionals.

We are a profession with 5000 years of being done by professionals, for professionals.

The problem though, is that the vast majority of records management is now done by users – and this has only been the case for about 20 years.

So we have a problem.

5000 years of professional records management.

20 years of users.

Our training and resources teach us how to think like professionals.

This means that if we build systems based on our training and resources, we’re going to build things that only professionals can easily use.

And I think that probably explains quite a lot of our problems.

The question we all need to ask every day is “have I built this system* to be easily understood by the users I have, at the maturity level they are at.”

*System in the general sense, including but not limited to the IT system sense.