This afternoon I spent two and a half hours in one of those wonderfully rambling meetings that sometimes happen in research centres, meetings which – even if convened with specific intentions – wander off to cover a whole range of topics and concepts, complemented by anecdotes and tangents. During the meeting, as often happens (in our centre at least) we ended up talking about the records continuum model and I threw in an idea I have had before but never written down – one which others may have had too, though I have not seen it expressed anywhere else. (If you have, please let me know!)

The classic diagram of the records continuum has always reminded me of the Bohr model of the atom (also known as the Rutherford-Bohr model). But I see this as more than a visual comparison. Taking a record as our electron, they do not simply drift out through the dimensions of the continuum over time and of their own accord (though they may sometimes spiral in to their destruction). Records can exist in a relatively stable way within a personal recordkeeping system, or within an organisational record keeping system, but – like electrons moving between orbits – moving from one dimension to another further out requires an injection of energy.

Energy, in the records and archives context, is work – an input of human and technological resources to effectively move the record into a different space through additional description and documentation, a transfer to a different part of the recordkeeping system, the development of a public interface, or similar.

It may also be true that the further out from the ‘nucleus’ the record travels in the continuum, the more energy is required to change the state of that record. For example, I know from my experiences with projects like the Find & Connect Web Resource that it takes an enormous input of energy to pluralise organisational records.

What is more, it takes energy to keep them there. Provided the energy level of the total system remains relatively constant, records are more likely to maintain their position(s) within the continuum in a relatively steady state. But if energy leaves the system – resources are removed, system maintenance declines, preservation activities are reduced – the loss of energy may mean records drop out of higher dimensions.

I wonder if there are further comparisons to be made between records and electrons? What about the wave-particle duality? Quantum mechanics? Do some systems contain Schrödinger’s record?

Like all metaphors, the ‘atomic continuum’ perhaps can’t be pushed too far, and there may be some physicists out there cringing. But, as the Wikipedia page on the Bohr model notes, though it has been superseded it is still used because it gives “correct results for selected systems”. The atomic continuum is the same – it’s not totally accurate, but I have found that in the right situation it works conceptually.

*Note: my blog posts are a little further apart than usual as I am working on a draft of the first chapter of my PhD. More regular blogging activity will, I hope, resume shortly.