What is a Record?
Records are the outputs that record each and every business and administrative transaction of an institution and details about its students, members of staff and all its external contacts. They are the essential resource for its effective continuation. They also form its collective memory that must be available beyond the memory or working life of any single member of staff.
The record is the final statement about the transaction or business process which it represents. Once 'declared', it must remain unaltered across time, no matter how many times it is recalled for use. It will contain unique information and/or data and is likely to be the end result of a document and version management process. If the information or data it contains is required for further processing then this should be copied and a new document created.
You must bear in mind that even when the transmission method of a record may use paper and surface mail the document is likely to have been created electronically in a PC using a word-processing package. The original may therefore be the final electronic, pre-printing-out version rather than a photocopy or second printout copy that is placed in a manual filing system. If the paper version is signed or otherwise formally authenticated then that will be considered as the 'original' in law.
What is a Document?
The best way to think about a document is that it is a work in progress by an individual or group of individuals. Only in its final form has it the possibility of becoming a record. All documents and records contain information and/or data and require tags or metadata so that they can be identified and retrieved. Formal document management systems are widely used, to control and track development through versions and editing, but at some point a final version is decided upon, and it is this version that has the possibility of becoming the record.
From what has been said already not all documents become records, and similarly not all records are documents. A record can also take the form of a database or its elements, film, sound recording, and a number of other possibilities.
