The education of records and information management professionals: A pathway to professional identity

Abstract

Records and information management (RIM) professionals ensure that information flows seamlessly through organizations, thereby increasing worker productivity and facilitating the growth of the business. Yet, these professionals are often overlooked or confused with IT, archivists, secretaries, or mailroom workers. This article contends that the lack of awareness about this profession stems from the absence of a formalized educational pathway for people to become RIM professionals. Drawing on data from a comprehensive online survey, this article argues that RIM education is best suited as an independent discipline within library and information science programs.

Keywords

Records and information management education professionalization

1. Introduction

The lifeline of any business is its records. From sticky notes to administrative reports and lunch reminders to payroll records; without its records a business will not function as well as it could or should. Today, many organizations continue to be challenged by the increasing volume of records they create and receive, and thus, must manage. To help alleviate this pressure, many organizations employ records and information management (RIM) professionals who are responsible for “the administration of programs for the efficient and economical handling, protecting, and disposing of records” [1]. These professionals also contribute to the growth of an organization by ensuring that the records flowing through it are accessible, secure, and destroyed when no longer legally or practically needed.

Despite its value to most, if not all, businesses, RIM is an overlooked or misunderstood profession. RIM professionals frequently struggle to be recognized within their organizations, and they often find themselves being confused with information technology managers, archivists, secretaries, or mailroom workers. For decades, RIM professionals have sought to establish a clear identity, but as North wrote in a 2017 issue of the Information Management Journal “our colleagues, for the most part, have no idea what we do or why” [2, p. 39]. Her call should not come as a surprise, as it has been an all too common point of emphasis among RIM professionals [3, 4]. The repeated calls for more attention to the RIM professional raise an important question: Why has the RIM profession failed to gain significant recognition by many of its peers? This article contends that the reason is in the education of RIM professionals.

Drawing on findings from an online survey of RIM professionals in the United States, the author examines their educational backgrounds and discusses their educational needs. As will be discussed, RIM courses may be found in many library and information science (LIS) programs, but they are often closely associated with archival studies programs. Based on the results of the survey, the author argues that RIM education must remain within LIS programs but as its own unique discipline separate from archival and library studies, or information technology.

This article is divided into five sections. The first section offers a brief history of the development of the RIM profession and the status of its professional education. The second section explains the methodology that the author used to create and distribute an online survey aimed to collect data about RIM professionals to understand their educational backgrounds and needs. The third section discusses the salient findings of the survey. Next, the article addresses the limitations of the study. This section is followed by a conclusion that presents suggestions for future research.

2. History of the RIM profession and the education of its professionals

The management of information can be traced back to ancient civilizations that first appeared in the Middle East. Even prior to the development of writing, traders created and kept, and therefore, had to manage objects that accounted for payments and inventories [5]. As writing and the means to exchange written ideas evolved, businesses and governments maintained increasing numbers of records to account for administrative decisions and financial transactions [6, p. 30-31]. During these times, records management activities developed into more formal processes as specific people were responsible for “controlling the forms of the records created by workers and scribes, formally accepting records in deposit, and storing them in such a way that they could easily be retrieved” [6, p. 30-1]. There is some evidence to support the notion that those responsible for these duties were of higher status and recognition within society [6, p. 33-4].

Over the course of the next several centuries, the value of the role of the records manager diminished and eventually gave way to more basic record keeping practices that emphasized the preservation of records, not necessarily the management of them [6, p. 36]. The French Revolution, which is recognized as the dawn of the modern area of archives, further engrained the idea within government institutions that preserving records was more ideal than appraising them [6, p. 50-1]. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, the role of the archivist had virtually eclipsed the notion of records management; and many archivists viewed their roles primarily as protectors of historical records [7], not active participants within organizations. This approach to record keeping carried forward in the United States for nearly the first two centuries after its founding, but by the end of the 19 ${}^{\text{th}}$ century, one invention and two world wars later, archivists at the National Archives realized that more action needed to be taken if they were to ensure that all the records of permanent value were to be preserved.

In the United States, the typewriter may be identified as the one invention that led to the growth of the records management profession. By facilitating the quicker creation of records, the device caused a rapid hiring of book keepers, office clerks, and typists, all of whom were responsible for various types of record keeping duties [8, 9]. The demand for these professionals increased during the First World War, and by the end of the conflict several “Filing” associations emerged in the Midwest [10].

Following World War I, in the United States, the National Archives experienced a massive surge of records from the federal government that grew exponentially as a result of the New Deal and the Second World War [11, p. 35-6]. In the wake of these events, the professional title of “records manager” started to appear in discussions among archivists, specifically, those at the National Archives. Prior to the war, archivists were primarily tasked with ensuring the preservation of government records, but it was the individual departments that were the ones to determine which records had permanent value. The archivists became increasingly worried that the departments, without proper guidance, would accidently destroy records of historical importance. Emmett Leahy, a staff member of the National Archives since 1935, proposed that archivists undertake “records management” roles that would allow them to work closely with the departments to ensure the proper retention and disposition of federal records [10, p. 434-5]. Leahy’s ideas were not warmly received at first, but they gradually established the foundation for the growth of records management duties as being separate from archival practices.

The changes at the National Archives (it would not become the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, until 1984) also coincided with several of the “Filing” associations naming themselves as “Records Management” associations and the founding of the Association of Records Managers and Administrators (ARMA) in 1955 [10, p. 439]. The word ‘record’ was intentionally chosen because these professionals generally accept that records are the entities that contain the information that must be managed within an organization [12]. The strict adherence to the concept of “records management” started to ebb in the early 1980s when several records managers started to refer to the profession as being “records and information management” [13, 14]. Yet, a clear distinction remains from the profession calling itself an “information management” profession. Detlor defines information management (IM) as the “management of the processes and systems that create, acquire, organize, store, distribute, and use information” [15, p. 103]. Absent from his definition are two functions that distinguish RIM professionals from IM professionals. First, RIM involves the systematic disposition, or destruction, of information [1], and second, the profession also plays a significant role in ensuring accountability within organization and assisting with risk management [16].

Contrary to its long history, the education of records and information management professionals has always existed in the shadows of archival or business education. In the 1940s, several library and information studies (LIS) programs introduced records management courses, but it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that records management and electronic records management courses became an integral component to most archival programs in LIS programs in North America [17]. Outside of higher education, RIM is typically taught as part of an associate degree that is often earned as a component of a business or office administration program [18]. The decentralized nature of RIM education may be the direct result of the lack of professionally recognized and supported curriculum guidelines or recommendations. For example, in the 1970s, the Society of American Archivists (SAA), established guidelines for archival education programs that would eventually become known as the Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies (GPAS) [19]. The RIM professional has no equivalent that LIS programs could use as a guidepost for formalizing course selection.

The lack of any guidelines about RIM education has prevented it from receiving sufficient attention from practitioners and/or educators. However, this has not been from a lack of effort. For example, Pemberton argued that RIM is more closely aligned with LIS education, specifically library education, as opposed to business programs [13, 20]. Williams [21] evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of several different approaches to RIM education, including certification, as part of graduate business programs (i.e., MBA programs), as a component of LIS programs, or as its own degree or certification program. He laid emphasis on RIM being associated with LIS programs because the “multi-disciplinary nature of library/information science combines well with the multi-disciplinary needs of the records management profession” [21, p. 40]. Unfortunately, none of these calls gained any traction.

One of the biggest challenges for the development of a robust and relevant RIM curriculum is that no academic research project has ever created a profile of the educational backgrounds of RIM professionals or sought to understand their educational needs. Understanding the professionals within a profession is paramount for a profession’s growth. For example, in 2004, a group of archival educators and practitioners developed a comprehensive survey to evaluate the state of the archival profession. Their report, which has popularly become known as the A*CENSUS (Archival Census and Education Needs Survey in the United States) contributed to a better understanding of the “profile of archivists” and identified numerous challenges facing the archival profession [22]. As intended, the report spurred additional research about archival professionals that have contributed to the development of the profession [23, 24]. The A*CENSUS survey sought to provide insight into the changing profile of archivists in the United States who were members of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), but what it did not do was target RIM professionals [22, p. 294].

The purpose of this article is to understand RIM professions in a way similar to what the A*CENSUS project did with the archival profession. This author makes no claims about replicating the scope and depth of that project due to a lack of resources. Rather, for the purposes of this article, the author assesses whether LIS education is best suited for the education of RIM professionals.

3. Methodology

The author used the A*CENSUS study as a starting template to develop questions for his online survey, but he did not use all the questions verbatim. Both surveys contained areas of overlap such as demographic information, data about employment profiles, education of the professionals, training and continuing education, and the career paths of these professionals. There were several sections of the A*CENSUS survey that the author did not include such as questions about professional association affiliation, leadership or professional involvement, and management practices.

The author’s survey consisted of approximately 90 questions, but due to the branching options and the selections that most respondents made, each participant only answered approximately 40 questions. The author designed the branching options to minimize the number of questions each participant had to navigate thereby reducing the number of survey drop-outs. Although it is impossible to know what, if any effect this feature had on the retention of the participants, of the 336 participants who started the survey, only 22 (6%), dropped out before answering the final question.

As seen in Fig. 1, the survey consisted of five sections: demographics, educational backgrounds, continuing education pursuits, certifications being pursued, and opportunities related to education or professional development. Four of the five sections contained branching. In the first section, the branching was based on employment status, of which participants could choose from one of six options: employed full-time, employed part-time, served as an independent RIM consultant, unemployed but looking for work, unemployed but not looking for work, and retired. The questions for each group were the same, but making the distinction among them allowed the author to word questions based on the employment status of the participant. For example, one question for participants who were employed full-time read “How many years have you worked as a RIM professional?” but for those participants who were retired, the wording was changed to read: “How many years did you work as a RIM professional?”

Figure 1.

Outline of survey used for project and the types of questions asked in section.

The second section of the survey focused on the educational backgrounds of the participants. Once again, the section contained several branching options based on the degrees that the participant identified as having earned. Based on the participant’s response, he/she would be directed to questions about the degree(s) selected. If a participant selected that he/she had earned an associate, bachelor, and master degree, he/she would be asked to identify the program or major for each of these degrees. Thus, if a participant only selected one degree, the next question he/she would see would only be relevant to the degree chosen. The third and fourth sections consisted of several questions that may have been skipped in their entirety if the participant was not pursuing another degree or certification(s) at the time he/she took the survey. The final section addressed the professional opportunities afforded to or pursued by the participants, as well as what educational topics they were interested in pursuing. This section did not contain any branching options.

Only the first question – country of origin – was mandatory because the author only sought responses from RIM professionals in the United States. The author intends to use this survey as template for future studies that will focus on RIM professionals in other countries. Most questions were closed-ended and many of them contained an ‘Other’ option that allowed participants to provide an additional response.

To ensure the survey design and question terminology were relevant to RIM professionals, the author received feedback about the survey’s design and its questions from two RIM professionals each of whom has over 20 years of experience in the field. Each professional was given complete access to the online survey and encouraged to complete it multiple times. The feedback from each colleague identified typos, confusing questions, and problems with the flow of branching.

The author distributed the survey to RIM professionals in two different ways. First, he sent the survey to several listservs known to be subscribed to by approximately 3,000 RIM professionals: RECMGMT-L, SAA, ERECS, and the SAA Records Management Section. Second, the author emailed the each president of the 92 ARMA chapters in the United States, requesting that the survey be distributed to his/her members. The author did not receive a positive or negative response from most of the messages he sent, but 10 people said they would forward it on to their members, six presidents politely declined the request stating that their members already receive too many emails, and six email addresses were erroneous.

Access to the survey began in early January 2017. A follow-up message was sent two weeks later to the listservs, but no follow-up email was sent to the ARMA chapter presidents to minimize email overload. The author closed the survey in the middle of February 2017.

Finally, the author chose not to conduct follow-up interviews with participants due to the exploratory nature of the project. As discussed in the following section, the results of the survey identified areas within the RIM profession that warrant further investigation and more in-depth analysis that will benefit from interviews with RIM professionals.

4. Findings and discussion

Three hundred and thirty-six people started the survey. The author excluded 17 participants because they dropped from the survey once they consented, only answered the first question (country of origins), indicated that they were from a country other than the United States, or did not spend any time on IM-related duties. Only the first question was mandatory, therefore not every question received a full number of responses. On average, about 300 participants responded to most of the questions. Although the results were analyzed to primarily understand the educational backgrounds and needs of RIM professionals, a brief profile of the respondents is provided in order to help contextualize the findings.

As Table 1 indicates, 65% of the participants identified themselves as women. All but one of the remaining participants who answered this question was male. One participant chose not to identify his/her gender. Comparing this statistic to the A*CENSUS report, the percentages are identical where they had 65% female and 35% male [22, p. 333-4]. In a survey by Velasquez for public librarians, she also found similar results with 67.7% of her respondents being female and 30.3% being male (0.3% declined to answer the question about gender identification) [25, p. 129].

Table 1
Gender of participants ( $n=$ 318)

Gender	Tallies
Female	206	(65%)
Male	111	(35%)
Prefer not to say	1	( $>$ 1%)

The average age of the participants was estimated to be 45.5 years old. Although the author used age ranges to collect the data, he relied on the technique used by the authors of the A*CENSUS report where they calculated “approximate means” by “multiplying the number of respondents for each range by an assigned value, adding these products together, and then dividing the total by the total number of respondents [for each range]” [22, p. 540]. There was nearly equal distribution among three of the six age ranges, though nearly 60% of the respondents were 45 years of age or older. Comparing the age ranges of genders, there was a higher percentage of women who were 54 years of age or younger (see Table 2). Once again, the medium age range of RIM professionals is comparable to that of archivists where the A*CENSUS calculated it to be 44.3 years of age [22, p. 488]. Velasquez did not estimate the average age of the participants who took her survey, but over half of them (63.7%) were 50–69 years of age [25, p. 129].

Table 2

Age range of participants ( $n=$ 319)

Age range	Male		Female		Overall total
18–24	0		1	( $>$ 1%)	1	(3%)
25–34	13	(12%)	38	(19%)	51	(16%)
35–44	24	(22%)	58	(28%)	82	(26%)
45–54	24	(22%)	58	(28%)	82	(26%)
55–64	29	(26%)	45	(22%)	76	(24%)
65 or older	21	(19%)	5	(2%)	26	(8%)
Total	111		205		319

Nearly 90% (282 of 313) of the participants who took the survey were white/Caucasian, and just over 3% (10 of 313) of the participants were African American. The remaining respondents were from various other ethnic backgrounds including Hispanic, Asian, Native American, or of mixed heritage. These findings are in agreement with the ethnicity composition of archivists. A*CENSUS reported that nearly 88% of its respondents were white or Caucasian, 2.8% were African American, 2.1% were Latino/Hispanic, and nearly 3.0% said ‘Other’ [22, p. 484]. Velasquez did not provide data about the ethnicity of public librarians, but a 2015 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor indicates nearly identical statistics in that 86% of librarians are white/Caucasian, 10% are Hispanic, 5.2% are Asian, and 4% are African American [26, p. 3].

In terms of employment status, Table 3 indicates that about 92% of the participants were employed full-time at the time they took the survey. The remaining respondents were part-time RIM professionals (2.5%), worked as consultants (2.5%), were retired (2.2%), or unemployed and looking for work (0.6%). The A*CENSUS asked a similar question about the employment status of archivists, and 78.3% of its respondents indicated that they were employed full-time, 10.2% were employed part-time, 9% were unemployed and seeking full-time work, and 3% were retired [22, p. 336].

Table 3

Employment status of RIM professionals ( $n=$ 319)

Employment status	Tallies
Employed full time	294	(92%)
Employed part time	8	(2.5%)
Independent RIM consultant	8	(2.5%)
Retired	7	(2.2%)
Unemployed looking for work	2	( $>$ 1%)

Table 4

Type of current employer ( $n=$ 301)

Type of organization	RIM professionals		Archivists (A*CENSUS study)
Education	48	(16%)	1,793	(36%)
For-profit	63	(21%)	270	(5%)
Government	98	(33%)	1,576	(32%)
Health care	6	(2%)	–
Legal	18	(6%)	–
Non-profit	25	(8%)	1,151	(32%)
Self-employed	1	( $>$ 1%)	65	(3%)
Other (please specify)	42	(14%)	132	(3%)

The employment location of the participants marks an area of divergence among RIM professionals and archivists. As seen in Table 4, in the current study, just over 30% of the respondents work in the government sector, 21% work in for-profit organizations, and 16% work in education. About a third of the archivists surveyed in the A*CENSUS survey also indicated that they worked in government organizations, but a much higher percentage (when compared to RIM professionals) worked in education and only about 5% of archivists work in for-profit organizations.

Respondents also varied in the number of years of professional experience as RIM professionals. On average, participants had 19.4 years of experience as RIM professionals, which was slightly fewer than the 22.2 years of experience of archivists [22, p. 353]. In both surveys, 44% of the participants had 10 or fewer years of experience. Moreover, what may be telling of a demographic shift within the RIM profession is that 61% of women participants had 15 or fewer years of experience, compared to only 37% of male participants, but 63% of the men had 16 or more years of experience, compared to only 36% of the female participants.

Finally, participants were from 38 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Texas was the state most represented with 16% (38 of 233 respondents), followed by Ohio and Wisconsin (7%, 17 respondents each), and California (6%, 13 respondents). Seven states (Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Rhode Island, Utah, and Vermont) had one representative each.

4.1 Educational backgrounds

Following the questions about their demographic information, participants were asked to identify all the degrees they had earned. This list of degrees also included professional and educational certifications, where the former would be from an organization such as ARMA or the Institute of Certified Records Managers (ICRM), and the latter would be from an educational program, such as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies’ Certificate of Archival Studies. Three hundred and four participants indicated that they had at least one degree. Table 5 indicates that there was a fairly even split among participants who indicated that they had a high school diploma, bachelor’s degree, and/or a master’s degree. On average, participants selected 2.2 degrees, but this number decreases to 1.8 when not considering the certifications. Despite these results, the number of degrees earned is slightly misleading because many participants only selected the highest degree they have earned. For example, 43 participants selected ‘Master’s Degree’ but did not select ‘High School Diploma’ or ‘Bachelor’s Degree’. To minimize the variation in how respondents reported their degrees, the author identified the highest degree earned from each participant and used that for further analysis. The author ranked the degrees in the following order from least amount to the highest level of education: High School Diploma, Associate, Bachelor, Juris Doctorate (J.D.), Master, and Ph.D.

Table 5
Degrees listed by all participants ( $n=$ 303)

Degree	Tallies
High school diploma	138	(46%)
Associate degree	34	(11%)
Bachelor’s degree	186	(61%)
Master’s degree	185	(61%)
Ph.D.	14	(5%)
J.D.	5	(2%)
Certification(s) – professional organization	132	(44%)
Certification(s) – college or university	24	(8%)
Other	2	(1%)

Table 6

Highest degree earned by gender ( $n=$ 300)

Degree	Female		Male		Overall
High school diploma	20	(10%)	6	(6%)	26	(9%)
Associate degree	11	(6%)	2	(2%)	13	(8%)
Bachelor’s degree	48	(24%)	26	(26%)	74	(25%)
J.D.	0	(0%)	1	(1%)	1	( $>$ 1%)
Master’s degree	117	(59%)	55	(54%)	172	(57%)
Ph.D.	3	(2%)	11	(11%)	14	(5%)
Total	199		101		300

A master’s degree was the highest degree earned by the majority of the participants. Men and women received nearly identical percentages of the degrees with the exception of the doctorate degree where men earned this degree at a higher percentage (Table 6). When evaluating the data by age range, a much higher percentage of RIM professionals who are 34 years of age and younger have their master’s degree than RIM professionals who are 35 years of age or older. This trend is also true when analyzing the degrees by the number of years of experience. With one exception, participants with less experience were more likely to have their master’s degree; and participants with 26–35 years of experience had a higher rate of having a bachelor’s degree. The one exception to this trend being that the participants who had 36 or more years of experience were more likely to have earned their master’s degree.

Table 7

RIM as first career according to age range ( $n=$ 301)

Age range	RIM was first career	RIM was not first career
25–34	26 (21%)	20 (11%)
35–44	39 (31%)	39 (22%)
45–54	29 (23%)	50 (28%)
55–64	27 (22%)	46 (26%)
65 or older	4 (3%)	21 (12%)
Total	125	176

Table 8

RIM as first career according to highest degree earned ( $n=$ 301)

Degree	RIM was first career	RIM was not first career
High school diploma	10 (8%)	16 (9%)
Associate degree	2 (2%)	11 (6%)
Bachelor’s degree	29 (23%)	44 (25%)
J.D.	0 (0%)	1 (1%)
Master’s degree	79 (63%)	95 (54%)
Ph.D.	5 (4%)	9 (5%)
Total	125	176

These findings are positive, especially knowing that many RIM positions still only require a bachelor’s degree [15]. The RIM profession still has a long way to go before the master’s degree becomes the norm for the profession rather than a ‘preferred’ degree, especially when compared to the archival and library fields. For example, in the A*CENSUS survey, 71% of 5,620 participants had a master’s degree [22, p. 348] and a 2009 study that focused on public librarians found that 86% of the 832 respondents had their master’s degree [25].

The data indicated that LIS degrees serve as a gateway to the RIM profession. Of the 214 master’s degrees that participants had earned (38 respondents had earned two or more degrees), 123 (57%) of the degrees received were LIS master’s degrees, of which the master of library science (MLIS) was by far the most popular. Nearly 80% of the participants had their MLIS. The second most frequently identified master’s degree was a master’s in history (42 participants, or 24%), which was followed by a master’s of business administration (14 participants, or 8%).

4.2 Becoming a RIM professional

Over the years, the author learned from his discussions with RIM professionals that RIM was not often the first career choice for many of these individuals. The survey data confirmed these interactions as 55% (176 of 301) of the participants indicated that being a RIM professional was not their first career. This number is not too far from what the A*CENSUS project found of archivists, where 58% of its respondents had at least one prior career before to the profession [22, p. 364]. These statistics are a bit alarming. There are some signs that RIM is gaining more attention as a primary career option. For example, Table 7 shows that a higher percentage of younger participants indicated that RIM was their first career, and for respondents for which RIM was their first career, a higher percentage of them had earned their master’s degree (Table 8).

Table 9
How participants became RIM professionals according to the highest degree earned (J.D. degree omitted because it only had one participant)

Reasons for becoming a RIM	High school	Associate	Bachelors	Masters	Ph.D.	Total
professional	diploma
Was assigned to RIM-related responsibilities by my employer	18 (72%)	6 (55%)	34 (47%)	48 (29%)	2 (17%)	108
Discovered that a records and information management job was available when I was looking for work	8 (32%)	6 (55%)	31 (42%)	68 (42%)	3 (25%)	116
Took a RIM-related class in college or graduate school	1 (4%)	2 (18%)	6 (8%)	68 (42%)	3 (25%)	80
Learned about the value of records management from day-to-day duties	7 (28%)	1 (9%)	13 (18%)	34 (21%)	3 (25%)	58
Held a work-study position as a RIM professional while in college or graduate school	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	3 (4%)	27 (17%)	2 (17%)	32
Knew someone who was a RIM professional	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	10 (14%)	17 (10%)	4 (33%)	31
Read about records and information management work and thought it sounded interesting	1 (4%)	0 (0%)	7 (10%)	21 (13%)	2 (17%)	31
Volunteered as a RIM professional	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	3 (4%)	5 (3%)	0 (0%)	8

Table 10

Becoming a RIM professional according to specific degrees

Reasons for becoming a RIM professional	Bachelor’s in	Master’s in	Master’s in	Master’s in
	business	LIS	business	history
	( $n=$ 20)	( $n=$ 114)	( $n=$ 11)	( $n=$ 19)
Was assigned to RIM-related responsibilities by my employer	7 (22%)	31 (14%)	4 (27%)	7 (23%)
Discovered that a records and information management job was available when I was looking for work	10 (31%)	46 (20%)	4 (27%)	8 (27%)
Took a RIM-related class in college or graduate school	1 (3%)	58 (26%)	3 (20%)	7 (23%)
Other (Please specify)	1 (3%)	3 (1%)	0	2 (7%)
Held a work-study position as a RIM professional while in college or graduate school	1 (3%)	22 (10%)	0	3 (1%)
Knew someone who was a RIM professional	4 (13%)	14 (6%)	0	0
Volunteered as a RIM professional	2 (6%)	5 (2%)	2 (13%)	0
Read about records and information management work and thought it sounded interesting	3 (9%)	20 (9%)	2 (13%)	1 (3%)
Learned about the value of records management from day-to-day duties	3 (9%)	28 (12%)	0	2 (7%)
Totals	32	227	15	30

The survey did not ask when each participant completed his/her degree(s), but it did inquire how each participant became a RIM professional. A surprisingly high percentage of participants, just over 40%, became aware of RIM because they took a RIM-related course as part of a master’s degree (Table 9). When comparing the reasons that the respondents became RIM professionals to several of the most popular degrees earned, slightly over a quarter of them who had earned their LIS degree entered the profession because he/she had taken a course in RIM (Table 10). In short, according to the data, master-level programs may serve as a better conduit for growing the RIM profession than other degree options. This said, the data also revealed that these programs have their limitations.

4.3 Certifications

Many RIM job announcements either require or prefer candidates with some type of professional certification [15]. The fourth section sought to understand what type of certifications the participants had earned. The survey divided certifications into two categories: those provided by a professional organization such as the Institute of Certified Records Managers (ICRM), ARMA, or Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), and certifications offered by a college or university school, department, or program. Overall, 141 out of 320, or 44% of the participants, had earned either type of certificates. As seen in Table 11, the majority of these individuals had earned certifications through professional organizations. Moreover, when considering only those with at least one certification, the average number of certifications earned increases 1.77. In other words, if a RIM professional has one certification, he/she is likely to obtained a second certification.

Table 11
Certifications earned by participants ( $n=$ 320)

	Type of certification
Earned a certificate?	From academic	From professional	Either	Both
	institution	organization	certificate	certificates
Yes	24 (8%)	131 (41%)	141 (44%)	14 (4%)
No	296 (93%)	189 (59%)	179 (56%)	306 (96%)

Focusing on the certifications that participants earned from professional organizations, Fig. 2 shows that the certification of records management (CRM) is by far the one that is most frequently completed. Of the 44 ‘Other’ certifications, there were 33 unique certifications identified by the participants. Of these certifications, the ones that appeared two or more times include: Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA+) (9 participants), Certified Records Analyst (CRA) (6 participants), Electronic Records Management Master (ERMm) (6 participants), Certified Municipal Clerk (3 participants), Certified Information Privacy Manager (CIPM) (2 participants), Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States (CIPP/US) (2 participants), Enterprise Change Management Professional (ECMp) (2 participants), Essentials of RIM (2 participants), and Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles Certificate (2 participants).

Table 12

Certifications earned by participants according to highest degree earned

Degree	Has the participant earned eithertype of certification?				Total # of participants
	No		Yes		per degree
High school diploma	16	(67%)	8	(33%)	24
Post-HS diploma	2	(100%)	0	(0%)	2
Associate’s degree	8	(62%)	5	(38%)	13
Bachelor’s degree	47	(64%)	26	(36%)	73
J.D.	3	(60%)	2	(40%)	5
Master’s degree	81	(47%)	91	(53%)	172
Ph.D.	5	(36%)	9	(64%)	14

Figure 2.

Types of certifications earned by participants from professional organizations.

According to Phillips, certifications are a means to atone for a lack of “formal university-level education programs” [27, p. 64]. To a certain extent, this may be true. Certification may not be a substitute for the lack of education but used to augment what is learned in the classroom. This may mean that the education these professionals receive may be insufficient because of new technologies and techniques that may influence RIM practices and certification is seen as a means to stay abreast of these changes. For example, of the 172 participants for which a master’s degree was their highest degree earned, over 50% of them had earned at least one certification (Table 12).

Table 13

Number of participants who either hold at least one certification or are pursuing certification according to the number of years that they have been RIM professionals ( $n=$ 303)

Years worked as a RIM professional	Earned a certification	Pursuing a certification
Less than 1 year	3 (50%)	3 (50%)
1–5 years	12 (18%)	39 (59%)
6–10 years	28 (47%)	42 (71%)
11–15 years	22 (63%)	23 (66%)
16–20 years	27 (53%)	36 (71%)
21–25 years	19 (61%)	25 (81%)
26–30 years	13 (45%)	24 (83%)
31–35 years	5 (56%)	7 (78%)
36 years or longer	11 (65%)	16 (94%)

Participants who had been in the profession for 10 years or longer were more likely to have earned their certification. The survey did not ask participants why they had pursued their certification(s), however, this finding may support the theory that there is value to certification because it allows professionals to be visible and gain credibility [28]. This may also explain why over 40% of the participants who had only been working in the profession for five or fewer years were pursuing a certification Table 13. Certifications most likely fill some educational needs, additional research is necessary to better understand what role they play in helping RIM professionals complete their daily tasks.

4.4 Educational knowledge

To understand the educational needs of participants the survey asked: “If there were no barriers to obtaining continuing education, which of the following [topics] would you most like to learn about in the next 1–3 years?” Participants could choose from a list of 29 different topics and/or include another topic of their preference. The topics were chosen because they represent a combination of issues fundamental to RIM duties, such as classification/taxonomy and records retention and disposition, and more technical topics, such as electronic records and management systems and data analytics. Participations could select as many topics as they wanted and an ‘All of the above’ option was available.

Two hundred seventy-six out of 327 participants, or 83%, selected at least one topic. On average, participants selected 8.7 different topics and 38 participants, or 14%, selected ‘All of the above’. Electronic record and management systems, Information Governance, Email Management, Legal Issues, and Long-Term Preservation averaged as the five top choices among the participants (Table 14). Despite the consistency of these top topics, some subtle differences emerged when cross-analyzing the response rate with other demographic data such as age and years worked as a RIM professional.

Table 14
Five topics most selected topics

Topic	Number of times selected
Electronic records and management systems	168 (62%)
Information governance	136 (50%)
Email management	127 (47%)
Legal Issues (i.e., discovery & admissibility)	119 (44%)
Long-term preservation	95 (35%)

Table 15

Select topics ranked by participant age

	Age range
Topic	18–34	25–34	35–44	45–54	55 or older
Database management	5	8	11	19	11
Data analytics	22	17	4	7	13
Leadership	6	8	23	24	15
Project management	2	7	15	17	10

A perfect example of variations among the topics include Leadership, Data Analytics, Project Management and Database Management. As seen in Table 15 for Leadership, participants between the ages of 25–34 and 35–44 selected it as the 6 ${}^{\text{th}}$ and 8 ${}^{\text{th}}$ most frequently selected topic, respectively, but it did not rank in the top 20 for any of the other age groups. Project Management was also a priority for participants 25–34 and 34–44 years of age, ranking 2 ${}^{\text{nd}}$ and 7 ${}^{\text{th}}$ , respectively, but it slipped to 15 ${}^{\text{th}}$ among participants who were 45–54 and 17 ${}^{\text{th}}$ for participants 55 and older. A similar occurrence appears with Database Management that ranked in the top ten among participants 25–34 and 35–44, but 19 ${}^{\text{th}}$ among participants who were 55 years of age or older. Data Analytics, however, proved to be a slight anomaly. It was the 4 ${}^{\text{th}}$ most frequently chosen topic by participants between the ages of 45–54 and 7 ${}^{\text{th}}$ by those who were 55 and older, but it ranked 22 ${}^{\text{nd}}$ and 17 ${}^{\text{th}}$ among participants between the ages of 25–34 and 35–44, respectively.

To sum up, the topics that require more human interaction and planning, i.e., Leadership and Project Management were the ones that were selected more often by younger participants, whereas the more technical topic, i.e., Data Analytics, was chosen as frequently by older participants. This could mean that younger RIM professionals feel more comfortable around emerging technologies or learn these skills in school but have realized that in order to be a successful RIM professional they need stronger soft skills.

For several topics, there are modest differences in the rankings of the topics based on the number of years of RIM experience. For example, Archival Practices (a topic intended to mean those duties performed by archivists, such as acquisitions, appraisal, arrangement and description, and outreach) ranked 9 ${}^{\text{th}}$ and 5 ${}^{\text{th}}$ among respondents with 5 or fewer years or 31 years or more of experience, respectively, but no other group ranked it higher than 16 ${}^{\text{th}}$ . Cloud Storage saw a higher degree of interest from participants who had 10 years of experience or less or 26 years or more of experience but was not deemed as an important topic by those with 11–20 years of experience. The reverse of this trend appears with the topics of Data Analytics, Privacy, and Security that received fewer selections from newer and veteran RIM professionals than those who had been working within the profession between 11 and 30 years (Table 16).

Table 16

Rankings of select topics based on years of RIM experience

	Years of experience
Topic	5 or fewer	6–10	11–15	16–20	21–25	26–30	31 or more
Archival practices	9	17	22	16	24	20	5
Cloud storage	9	7	13	20	13	4	11
Data analytics	24	11	3	3	4	5	14
Privacy	20	23	3	13	13	15	5
Security	22	15	9	6	13	20	5

As previously discussed, a high number of RIM professionals earn or were earning their certification. On one hand, this may be indicative of general expectations among employers of RIM professionals, but the other hand, it could also be due to educational programs not providing sufficient RIM knowledge and skills. The RIM profession continues to evolve quickly as it must adapt to the ever-changing technological developments, and certifications may allow professionals to stay informed with the shifting scenery. Thus, one might expect to see a difference in educational needs between participants with their certification and those without it, but the differences are nominal.

On average, those with their certification selected 7.7 topics compared to 8.9 topics by those without their certification. Thirteen participants with their certification selected ‘All of the above’ as compared to 19 participants without their certification. The top four topics selected by participants with or without their certification mirror the choices made by the other participants. There is one surprising difference and that is the fifth most selected choice by the participants who did not have their certification is Retention and Disposition, which ranked 18 ${}^{\text{th}}$ by those who had a professional certificate. What is interesting is where this topic falls among the highest degree earned. It was the 3 ${}^{\text{rd}}$ most selected topic by those with their high school diploma, the 5th most selected topic of those with an associate or bachelor’s degree, but it was the 20 ${}^{\text{th}}$ ranked topic for those with their master’s degree. Further investigation is necessary to understand why this is the situation, but it is possible that creating and revising retention and disposition schedules remain a fundamental practice of RIM professionals and the necessary knowledge to design and revise them is a core component of most RIM courses taught at the master-level [17].

Prior to this point, the focus has been on those topics that participants selected the most. The topics that they selected the fewest number of times included: Ethics, Budget Management, Funding, and Digital Imaging. Budget Management and Funding may have received few selections because many of the participants worked in government organizations where they have little control over their internal finances or see little need to raise funds for the RIM program of their institution (unlike many archives, RIM programs are seldom independent agencies). Disaster Preparedness and Recovery may not be as an important of a topic simply because many organization give little attention to it until it is too late [29].

Several “traditional” RIM topics did not receive high response rates, these include: Retention and Disposition, Classification/Taxonomy, Vital Records Management, and Disaster Preparedness and Recovery. The first two topics ranked 14 ${}^{\text{th}}$ and 15 ${}^{\text{th}}$ , respectively, while Vital Records Management was the 22 ${}^{\text{nd}}$ most frequently selected topic, and Disaster Preparedness and Recovery ranked 24 ${}^{\text{th}}$ out of the 29 topics. These topics, as fundamental as they may be to RIM duties, may not be deemed priorities because they are not dynamic enough to require additional education or training. This is an area that requires additional research to better understand why participants did not give these topics as high of a priority as they did the more technical topics.

These results indicate that RIM professionals have a wide variety of educational interests and needs, but not every topic listed on the survey may be essential to new or emerging RIM professionals. For example, leadership skills may develop over time as the professional gains confidence in the workplace and how to manage people, however, because of the interest among younger participants in topics such as leadership, RIM educational programs would benefit from including a professional development course that focuses extensively on interpersonal skills. This type of course must compliment more technical knowledge typically associated with RIM duties, such as creating and revising retention and disposition schedules or performing data analysis on a recordkeeping system.

5. Limitations

The author’s study was not without its limitations. First, the study collected data from a random group of RIM professionals from the United States. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized to other RIM professionals in the United States or in other countries. As a future study, the author intends to conduct a similar project for RIM professionals in other countries. Second, the listservs and local ARMA chapters to which the author sent the survey reached only a limited portion of RIM professionals in the United States. Future studies about RIM professionals must consider other means for researching professionals who may not subscribe to listservs or be members of ARMA. This may prove difficult as it would most likely entail identifying organizations that have RIM professionals (not all of them do) and contacting them individually. Moreover, the reliability of the survey could have been enhanced to guard against subjectivity of the questions inherent in the author’s own academic perspective of the profession. Although the author had two RIM professionals examine the survey prior to its distribution, a more thorough approach would have been to conduct a small pilot study limited to a specific region or select ARMA chapters. This process will help to ensure the clarity of each question and the flow of the survey.

The author designed the survey intending to construct a demographic and educational profile of RIM professionals in the United States. To date, no such survey has been conducted by an academic researcher, therefore, little empirical evidence is known about this profession. Thus, the findings of the survey identified several areas that require additional research that may focus extensively on select components of the survey. This would allow for a more in-depth analysis of specific topics, such as why a high number of participants have earned or were in the process of earning professional certification and/or why technical topics were the most frequently selected ones by them. The research would benefit from follow-up interviews.

6. Conclusion and future research

The education of records and information management professionals has been an overlooked area by LIS scholars and practitioners. Although RIM has been a long-standing component of LIS education, this area of education has traditionally been tied to archival education. Within most LIS programs, students who take RIM courses are not typically taking them to become RIM professionals; instead, they take the courses to learn about RIM in order to broaden their archival knowledge because, as archivists, it is likely that they may be tasked with RIM duties. The lack of a separate educational track is one of the major threats to the long-term sustainability of the profession because RIM is simply not seen as a possible career options for many students entering LIS programs. These students typically only encounter the profession by chance, that is, if they enroll in a RIM course that is often a part of another track or program.

The research discussed in this article demonstrates the need for RIM professionals to have a diverse educational background that suits the ever-changing dynamics of technology and organizations. There is no better place for aspiring RIM professionals to gain this knowledge than in LIS programs. The diverse interest in topics and issues indicates that RIM should no longer be a sub-topic within archival education and could thrive as its own program in many LIS schools. RIM education needs to be as diverse as possible in order to combine elements of archival, information studies, and information technology course work. For example, a RIM-focused program could consist of courses covering topics such as data analytics, database management, project management, information governance, taxonomy development, electronic records management, preservation, and legal issues. Combined, such an array of classes allows students to gain knowledge about relevant technological developments and fundamental RIM practices as they develop the necessary soft skills to become future leaders.

Within the past ten years, the RIM profession has separated itself from its archival counterpart, yet most RIM classes have remained closely tied to archival programs. There is still some relationship between RIM and archives but the bond is not as strong as it once was. RIM today has more in common with information science and technology than it does with archival practices. There are some programs in North America that have pulled RIM away, if not separated completely, from archival studies, such as the Master of Archives and Records Administration (MARA) program at San José State University, the Master of Information Management (MIM) program at Dalhousie University, and records management certification programs at Louisiana State University and the University of Toronto. These programs and their courses are the minority within the LIS community; and this trend must change if RIM ever wants to emerge from the shadows of the archival and IT professions and firmly establish its own identity.

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The education of records and information management professionals: A pathway to professional identity

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. History of the RIM profession and the education of its professionals

3. Methodology

Table 1 Gender of participants ( n = 318)

Table 5 Degrees listed by all participants ( n = 303)

Table 9 How participants became RIM professionals according to the highest degree earned (J.D. degree omitted because it only had one participant)

Table 11 Certifications earned by participants ( n = 320)

Table 14 Five topics most selected topics

6. Conclusion and future research

References

Table 1
Gender of participants ( $n=$ 318)

Table 5
Degrees listed by all participants ( $n=$ 303)

Table 9
How participants became RIM professionals according to the highest degree earned (J.D. degree omitted because it only had one participant)

Table 11
Certifications earned by participants ( $n=$ 320)

Table 14
Five topics most selected topics