Contemporary records manager and managing records specialist-organiser according to Jan Kościołek

Abstract

History of records management, as well as the past routes of the profession of records manager, starts much earlier then conceptualizing theoretical frameworks of this scientific discipline. Also management is not a term that should be identified only with the previous century. The timeline of records management starts usually in the 1950s with the American need of coping with tons of paper covered with writing every year. This field of general administrative management is so universal in its scope, it can be said that it developed – not under the name of records management
yet – simultaneously in many countries, Poland included. The main goal of the article is to redefine the profession of records manager and looking for its reflections in ideas of Jan Kościołek. Consideration of records management included overview of the discipline’s definitions, as well as indicating tasks of a records manager in an institution. The most important one is permanent search for efectiveness.
As early as in 1947 Jan Kościołek suggested that the task of observing work of organisational units and neutralising flaws should be entrusted to a specific unit – organisation’s office. Five years later, in 1952, occurred first concepts of job that could be compared or equated to records manager. The specialist-organiser was supposed to analyse office work, look for reasons for inefficiency, design changes and implement them. All these tasks in contemporary institutions should be handled by a records manager. A reflection of the office tasks coordinator, described in the Polish law from 2011, could be found in another Kościołek’s publication. In 1952 he entrusted the job with similar tasks. This is concluding evidence that at the turn of the first and the second half of the 20th century not only in practice, but also in the academic field one pursued to establish methods of effective creation and storage of records.