I've been struck by the number of projects that engage the life-cycle as a model for looking at the challenges of long-term digital preservation. At least, this seems to be the case in Europe and America. I'm a continuum person myself and I'm surprised at the lack of take-up of this alternative approach to the RM/Archive function, particularly in an electronic context.
The life-cycle model is unhelpful. The continuum model provides a more useful way of looking at the problem of digital preservation. Reasons for this include:
- it's no longer feasible to divide records creation, use and eventual destruction/retention into time-based stages managed by either records managers or archivists;
- as archivists we can't afford to wait until the end of the cycle to become involved, especially when talking about digital records; and
- the record keeping systems used to manage digital records needs to be conceived of and designed as part of a continual process by all interested parties.
This isn't a question of semantics, as some people think. It's about recognising that electronic/digital records have changed the way we conceptualise and do archival and records management work.
