Richard J. Cox

The importance of records in modern society is explored by re-examining some of the historical antecedents for critical functions in the modern records professions. The motivation for writing this book comes from a conviction of the importance of records and records professionals in organizations and society, as well as the need to possess a stronger sense of the events, trends, people, debates, and controversies producing the modern records professions. Archivists and records managers have tended to discount the importance of their historical antecedents, ignoring the fact that many of the current debates and issues before the profession are not new but embedded in the historical evolution of the records professions. Re-examining some of the historical origins helps records professionals to re-examine their mission to manage records for the benefit of organizations and of all of society. Such re-evaluation also helps to remind records professionals and others that the concerns generated by new electronic recordkeeping technologies are not new at all but built deep within the fabric of traditional records creation and administration.

Historical Perspectives on Modern Archives and Records Management

Closing an Era

Drawing on a wide range of writings from archivists, historians, librarians, and preservationists, Cox summarizes the past decade of discussion concerning practical methodologies of documenting localities.

Documenting Localities

David Wallace

David A. Wallace

This volume widens the perspective of the roles that records play in society. As opposed to most writings in the discipline of archives and records management, which view records from cultural, historical, and economical efficiency dimensions, this volume highlights one of the most salient features of records: the role they play as sources of accountability. The authors demonstrate that records are not mute observers and recordings of activity, rather, they are frequently objects of memory formation and erasure.

Accountability and Records in Modern Society

Archives and the Public Good

Libraries and archives have violated their public trust, argues Nicholson Baker in his controversial book Double Fold, by destroying their paper-based collections. The present work critiques Mr. Baker's argument, responding point by point. Whether one agrees with Nicholson Baker or not, the other side of the story is offered in this book.

A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries

Vandals in the Stacks?

In The Demise of the Library School, Richard J. Cox places the present and future of professional education for librarianship in the debate on the modern corporate university. The book is a series of meditations on critical themes relating to the education of librarians, archivists, and other information professionals, playing off of other commentators analyzing the nature of higher education and its problems and promises.

Personal Reflections on Professional Education in the Modern Corporate University

The Demise of the Library School

For the past three decades, policies regarding a variety of information issues have emanated from federal agencies, legislative chambers, and corporate boardrooms. Despite the focus on information policy, it is still a relatively new concept and one only now beginning to be studied. The subject area is wider than believed--archives and records policies, information resources management, information technology, telecommunications, international communications, privacy and confidentiality, computer regulation and crime, intellectual property, and information systems and dissemination. This is not a compendium of policies to be used, but rather an exploration in a more detailed fashion of the fundamental principles supporting the setting of records policies. Records policies are critically important for records professionals to develop and use as a means of strategically managing the information and evidence found in the millions of records created daily, provided that the policies are based on comprehensible principles. This is a series of discourses on the fundamentals of archives and records management needing to be understood before any organization attempts to define and set any policy affecting records and information. The chapters concern defining records, how information technology plays into policy compiling, the fundamental tasks of identifying and maintaining records as critical to records and information policy, public outreach and advocacy as a key objective for such policy, and the role of educating records professionals in supporting sensible records policies.

Managing Records as Evidence and Information

The public increase of interest in the past has not necessarily brought with it a greater understanding about how archives are formed. To this end, Richard Cox takes a serious look at archival repositories and collections. Cox suggests that archives do not just happen, but are consciously shaped (and sometimes distorted) by archivists, the creators of records, and other individuals and institutions. In this series of essays, Cox offers archivists rare insight into the fundamentals of appraisal, and historians and other users of archives the opportunity to appreciate the collections they all too often take for granted.

Forming Archives by Rethinking Appraisal

No Innocent Deposits

Leslie Jones

Profiles the life and literary career of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Richard J. Cox

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