Records management
practice or discipline of controlling and governing what are considered to be the most important records of an organization throughout the records life-cycle
Records management, also known as records and information management, is an organizational function dedicated to the management of information in an organization throughout its life cycle, from the time of creation or receipt to its eventual disposition. This includes the identification, classification, storage, security, retrieval, tracking, and destruction or permanent preservation of records. The ISO 15489-1: 2001 standard ("ISO 15489-1:2001") defines records management as "[the] field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use, and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records".
An organization's records preserve aspects of institutional memory. In determining how long to retain records, their capacity for re-use is important. Many are kept as evidence of activities, transactions, and decisions. Others document what happened and why. The purpose of records management is part of an organization's broader function of governance, risk management, and compliance and is primarily concerned with managing the evidence of an organization's activities as well as the reduction or mitigation of risk associated with it. Recent research shows linkages between records management and accountability in governance.
Concepts of record
The concept of record is variously defined.
“Records management” enters the record as practice or discipline of controlling and governing what are considered to be the most important records of an organization throughout the records life-cycle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Records, management and practice can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Records management” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Records, management and practice provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q517656. The Library of Congress control number is sh85111941. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Records management”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Records management primary sources, Records management archive and Records research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Records management”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Records management” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.