Data: "Streams of raw facts representing events occurring in organizations or the physical environment before they have been organized or arranged into a form that people can understand and use. (Laudon & Laudon, 2002, p. 8)"

Information: "Data that have been shaped into a form that is meaningful and useful to human beings. (Laudon & Laudon, 2002, p. 8)"

Types of Records

"Text: In information technology, text is a human-readable sequence of characters and the words they form that can be encoded into computer-readable formats such as ASCII. (Searchdatabase.com, 2002)" Text is also called alphanumeric data.

Image records are records that are composed of two-dimensional visual "pictures," either text or graphic, such as charts, photographs, maps, EKGs, and purchase orders.

Physical-media records are records stored on a physical media, such as paper, photographs, charts, tape recordings, and movies.

Electronic records are records created in electronic form, such as web sites, e-mails, word processed documents, and POS transaction records.

"Records include all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, ... appropriate for preservation ... because of the informational value of the data in them. (National Archives & Records Administration, 2002)"

"Record information: All forms (e.g. , narrative, graphic, data, computer memory) of information registered in either temporary or permanent form so that it can be retrieved, reproduced, or preserved. (Institute for Telecommunications Sciences, 2002)"

A Record is made up of three elements: Content, structure, and context. To retain all of the information in the record, all three elements must be stored and retrievable. Many systems store only some of the elements.

The Media on which a record is created or stored should not to be confused with the record itself.

Management of Records

Traditional records management maintains the physical form of the document (paper, film, tape, etc.) and provides for the organization, storage, and retrieval of the document in its original form.

"Microform is a generic term for any medium, transparent or opaque, bearing microimages. A microimage is a unit (e.g., a page) of textual, graphic, or computer-generated material that is contained on aperture cards, microfiche, microfilm, microopaques, or other microformats and that is too small to be read without magnification. Microforms may be reproductions of existing textual or graphic materials or they may be original publications. (The Library Corp., 2002)"

"EDM (Electronic Document Management) is the management of different kinds of documents in an enterprise using computer programs and storage. An EDM system allows an enterprise and its users to create a document or capture a hard copy in electronic form, store, edit, print, process, and otherwise manage documents in image, video, and audio, as well as in text form. An EDM system usually provides a single view of multiple databases and may include scanners for document capture, printers for creating hard copy, storage devices such as redundant array of independent disks systems, and computer server and server programs for managing the databases that contains the documents. EDM may be needed in enterprises that capture and store a large number of documents such as invoices, sales orders, photographs, phone interviews, or video newsclips. EDM may be combined with or integrated into other applications. It may be combined with a workflow  management approach. Capture may include document imaging  and optical character recognition (OCR). (Searchdatabase.com, 2002)"

EIM (Electronic Image Management) are systems that are similar to EDM but generally more limited in their scope to include paper-based records and digital images of pictures and other two-dimensional static graphic records.

References:

    Institute for Telecommunications Sciences, U. S. Department of Commerce. (2000, August 23). Federal Standard 1037C. Retrieved February 28, 2002 from http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-030/_4464.htm
    National Archives and Records Administration. (2002). 44 U.S.C. 3301. Retrieved February 28, 2002 from http://www.nara.gov/nara/cfr/cfr1220.html
    Searchdatabase.com (2002). Definitions. Retrieved February 28, 2002 from http://searchdatabase.techtarget.com
    The Library Corporation. Marc21 Standards. (2002). Retrieved February 28, 2002 from http://www.carl.org/tlc/crs/Bib0061.htm

- R. S. Kulzick - 02/28/2002 -

Contact rkulzick@stu.edu with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2002 Raymond S. Kulzick - Last modified: September 13, 2008