Records Management

The Catholic Lawyer, Nov 2017

By John J. Treanor, Published on 11/13/17

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Records Management

Records Management John J. Treanor Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Catholic Studies Commons Recommended Citation - Article 4 JOHN J. TREANOR* John Treanor: While we wait for my computer to boot-up, let me tell you something about myself. I am something of a rare breed because I am both a Certified Archivist and a Certified Records Manager. Dual certification is a fairly recent phenomenon in the information management profession. It produces a form of schizophrenia: on one side, the little devil sits on your shoulder and says, "When in doubt, throw it out;" and on the other side, the little angel sits on your shoulder and says, "Oh no, somebody's going to be interested in that someday." It really creates some problems and further complicates the difficult task of explaining to people what is an archivist. As I met some of you last evening, I was introduced to some of your wives as an archivist. The response was always the same, "A what?" My mother has had a great deal of amusement with this issue because she has one son who is a perfusionist and another who is an archivist. That's usually good for at least an hour and a half conversation in social settings. It is hard to explain to people. For a long time, my mother thought I was a disk jockey because I kept old records. My daughter, who attended Saint Mark's in Dorchester, Massachusetts, (and is about to have a baby at any minute) had the same problem in the third grade. The good Sister asked her, "What is it that your daddy does?" Erin was very quick to respond, "My dad is an archivist." The good Sister said, "Oh, an architect?" And she said, "No, no, no, an archivist." The good Sister responded, "That's okay, little girl, sit down." The next year when they asked Erin what it was her father did and she said an archivist, the teacher said, "Oh, an archeologist?" And she said, "No, no, an archivist. I can tell you . . . ." But Sister responded, "That's okay, little girl, sit down." By the third year when Erin was asked what her father did, she just said, "He's * Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Archives and Records Center, Archdiocese of Chicago, Illinois. dead." Showing up at the first Parent/Teacher Association caused a small scene. Why are we discussing records? What is behind the great importance in managing information today? I have always maintained that the best arguments for good Catholic diocesan archives and records management programs are complicated and pressing litigation issues. Of course, that is not what Catholic diocesan officials or bishops to whom I've talked want to hear, but litigation issues always present an opportunity for archivists and records managers to address the concerns of keeping records properly. I think for many bishops and diocesan attorneys the notions of poor record keeping and lack of accountability have underscored why this issue is so pressing in the Church today. I am going to talk a little bit about good record keeping, but I want you to keep in the back of your mind why this discussion was not going on eight or ten years ago. I was hired and came to Chicago during Cardinal Bernardin's administration. Cardinal Bernardin always considered himself to be an archivist. As Chancellor of the Diocese of Charleston, Joe took it upon himself to train and assign seminarians to keep the archives. When he came to Chicago, he found a different set of problems. The record keeping activities of his predecessor, Cardinal Cody, were found to be less than adequate. The Diocese already had an archivist and a records manager. The archivist was a priest who presented assignment problems. He looked upon researchers as snoops and potential reporters for a supermarket tabloid. The records manager, a young woman, did not get along with this old irascible priest. At professional association meetings, they would get into shouting matches, one calling the other a "clerical pack-rat," and the other calling their fellow employee a "recordsabortionist." So I was brought to Chicago to try to straighten out that mess and impose order and good sense on the management of information. What you are about to hear and see addresses many of Brother Patrick's comments, with almost all of which I would agree, except that he said at one point that he had never seen anything as extensive in terms of record keeping. I would argue that this is not uncommon in most well-managed corporations/organizations. What we have in Chicago is a fairly centralized form of record keeping. It is not perfect because humans maintain the system, and they are not perfect. Based in policy and adequately funded, however, our program is a model for the rest of the Catholic dioceses to follow. A centralized record keeping system develops, and I strongly believe this, a form of accountability. If a diocese can determine, at the point of creation, what kinds of records it will keep and what material goes into files, it will (...truncated)


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John J. Treanor. Records Management, The Catholic Lawyer, 2017, Volume 42, Issue 1,