Interdisciplinary approach in Records Management

Abstract

The article discusses the development of Records Management. The author draws attention to the significant influence of the interdisciplinary approach on the formation of the object and subject in Records Management. Such a trend in the development of Records Management was laid down by its founder, K.G. Mityaev, and was supported in the works of Russian scholars. Records Management develops in particularly close connection with Archival Studies, Source Studies and other disciplines of the historical cycle, where a record (document) is the object of study. The most significant issue in interdisciplinary research in the range of those disciplines is the classification of documents. A broad approach to the document as an object of research, in the conditions of interdisciplinarity, led to the attempts of expanding the field of research in Records Management by including a book in it and creating a “general theory of the document”. Such attempts, made in the 1960s and at the beginning of the 21^st century, were unsuccessful. However, the further development of Records Management in the context of interdisciplinarity may pose a threat of blurring the subject field of this scientific discipline. Therefore, at the present stage, Records Management needs to deepen its own specialization.