Prof. Paulo Batista

University of Évora, Portugal

Speech Title: Epistemology, Information & Knowledge Management

Abstract: Following the Second World War an explosion in the quantity of documentation led to a dramatic change in Archiving, or the profession referred to as records managers/records management and archivists/archives. Starting in the 1980s, however, archivists in Quebec began to make great progress by changing their approach and looking at the entire documentary cycle from current to definitive information. Carol Couture and JeanYves Rousseau made a crucial contribution towards the understanding of the Three Age Theory that viewed Archiving as an integrated discipline centered on a structural understanding of archives. In 1994, their work Les Fondements de la Discipline Archivistique, presented a new interpretation of Theodore Schellenberg's Three Age Theory. They called attention to the fact that the three phases of archival documents are not separate but, on the contrary, integrated. They argued that these three stages can even be looked at in a segmented way, provided the union between them is ensured. Their great innovation relative to Schellenberg's work lay, precisely, in critiquing the division and separation between the three ages of archival documents. Couture and Rousseau thereby brought together all the phases of the lifecycle of records, from production to dissemination, in opposition to the sterile distinction advocated by traditional archivists and document managers. In my opinion, however, the best approach to integrating information management is known as records continuum, which places archives in a post-custodial, informational, and scientific paradigm. This Australian concept arose in the 1990s amid the huge explosion of information, communication technologies and new media. This context forced Information Science to redefine its object of study. Records continuum is closely related to the integrated management model of Couture and Rousseau, while it carries their innovation further, perfecting it and replacing it with systemic dynamics and providing continuity between archives. In fact, records continuum means, literally, continuous management. It looks at the whole process from the production of records to their final archiving. Otherwise, we cannot speak of continuous management. That is why, when we speak of rigid archives – current, intermediate, and definitive, this approach is more theoretical than practical. There is, in fact, no separation between these phases, even less so from the point of view of the value of documents. The traditional distinction between information with probative and historical value ceases to exist. The information is simultaneous and is, in fact, the same.

Biography : Paulo Batista is PhD Researcher at CIDEHUS.UÉ-Interdisciplinary Center for History, Cultures and Societies of the University of Évora, Portugal, where is the coordinator of the research group 2: Heritage and Literacies. Currently works as professor at the Iscte-IUL, in the Master in Architecture and Visual Culture in Lisbon, and at the Autonomous University of Lisbon, where is coordinator and professor of the Postgraduate in Promotion and Cultural and Educational Dynamization of Archives and Libraries, and the Postgraduate in Architectural Archives. He has lectured in the Master in Information Science and Documentation at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (UNL) and has held senior technician positions at the Portuguese Institute of Cultural Heritage, the Portuguese Institute of Architectural Heritage, and the Torre do Tombo Archives. He has also worked as researcher at the Center for the Study of History and Ancient Cartography of the Institute of Tropical Scientific Research.
Paulo Batista is author of a number of books and about 80 papers published in international journals and conference proceedings. He was also keynote speaker and invited speaker at various international conferences (Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam).
More informations: https://www.cienciavitae.pt//0618-CE7B-7145