cording to schedules agreed upon by the ARM function and (ISBN 0-471-14719-2.) operational managers responsible for the business areas that produce the records. Yet the reality for most organizations is This book will be a wake-up call for many senior executives, that it will not be practical to digitize the majority of information CIOs, and IT managers, not to mention attorneys and auditors, assets currently in paper form. Moreover, and often because of who have yet to be stung in a courtroom by not fully appreciatexplicit IT storage administration policies, a growing number ing the importance of, and requirements for, recordkeeping of electronic records are being routinely destroyed after 30-60 functionality in enterprise document management systems days with no regard for their continuing value to the organiza-(EDMS). Most EDMS products today are seriously lacking in tion and often before they should be according to established such functionality. Developers of these products take their cues record-retention schedules. The result is often that records that largely from CIOs and IT specialists in the organizations that could be more efficiently maintained in electronic form, includconstitute the marketplace for their products. It thus seems safe ing e-mail, are being printed and sent to paper file centers, to assume that those groups lack appreciation of recordkeeping significantly increasing the number of new paper records and and the risks of ignoring the recordkeeping aspects of modern adding to the subsequent demand for conversion to microform systems that produce electronic documents, the large majority or scanning back into digital form at considerable cost to the of which constitute organizational records and evidence of the organization. Thus, for most organizations there will be a conorganization's business.
tinuing need to manage information stored in nondigital form Apart from being an excellent planning guide for operational and for these resources to be carefully linked to digital holdings managers and IT technicians contemplating or already in the managed in EDM systems. midst of developing or procuring an EDMS, this book will also
The information management and information technology go a long way toward closing the knowledge gap in the area coverage is excellent. Texts on information management and of document management in an increasingly electronic environtechnology often address only information technology. The aument. The book is an 11-course meal on EDMS topics normally thor has provided an excellent balance between information regarded as the fare of chief information officers or heads of management and information technology coverage. There is IT. However, what separates this book from many others in good coverage of de facto, de jure, and what Sutton refers the EDMS genre is that the author has integrated considerable to as de jour information standards. This coverage is more archives and records management (ARM) coverage throughout.
explanatory and descriptive than prescriptive. The IT coverage I use the term ''EDMS genre'' advisedly because searches of does not, however, include discussions of intranets, extranets, the reasonably current offerings of books with titles that include and WWW technologies and related opportunities and risks, the words document and management appear to produce few including opportunities to use this technology to deliver multiresults when one excludes several that are in the main limited media recordkeeping services. This is chiefly due to the fact to document imaging systems. I was not able to find any others that the development of intranets/extranets has taken off sharply among these with coverage of recordkeeping functional requiresince the book was written, as new as it is. This is also a ments and related issues.
comment on the growing frailties of traditional publishing tech-CIOs who recognize that EDM systems are producing disniques when dealing with technological subjects: a book like coverable evidence that may place the organization, including this is written in 1995, finalized and published in 1996, and system managers, at serious legal risk will be certain to ensure reviewed in 1997 (if one is fortunate, given the very long lead that ARM specialists will be well represented in their systems time for most professional journals). Nonetheless, the planning requirements and development teams. These professionals are and implementation lessons found in the book are still very now being invited to the table by some CIOs and are struggling relevant. to understand the information management and technology
The records management sections include excellent coverage (IM&T) perspective and technical jargon, and to frame ARM of such topics as distinguishing between document and records needs and concerns in language that their IM&T counterparts management, controlled vocabulary/thesauri and legal issues, will both understand and support. At the same time, IM&T all topics that will be hotly debated between IM&T and ARM specialists lack any foundation in recordkeeping, a form of docprofessionals in any interdisciplinary EDMS development team ument management that is more rigorous than the one to which (but maybe not otherwise). Apart from clearly identified rethey are accustomed. This book offers an excellent guide for cordkeeping chapters and sections, including those on funcboth groups, and for executives to help them catch up with tional requirements for recordkeeping, Sutton offers considerthe growing trend in the modern workplace toward the use of able insights for the IM&T specialist on the recordkeeping enterprisewide knowledge-and information-based technologies aspects of metadata/document-profiles/data-dictionaries, conwhich bring with them profound changes in the ways records version of legacy documents, OCR/ICR, multimedia, and verare created and managed. sion control. Of interest to both IM&T and ARM professionals Archives represent records of continuing or permanent value is the considerable coverage of other topics of growing concern, such as e-mail, business systems analysis/process management,