preventing loss of organizational memory
TRANSCRIPT
MENCEGAH KEHILANGAN MEMORI ORGANISASI
PREVENTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL
MEMORY LOSS
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Rusnah Johare
Alwi Mohd Yunus
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ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
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NATIONAL MEMORY
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MEMORY OF THE WORLD
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MEMORY OF THE WORLD
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THE LOST MEMORY :
LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES DESTROYED IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY FIRST CENTURY
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1904 Italy, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria di Torino
• Fire started in the Library. Irreparable damage was done to some of the most renowned treasures.
1914 Belgium,Library of the Catholic University of Louvain
• Over 300,000 volumes, about 1,000 incunabula, hundreds of manuscripts were all reduced to ashes when German soldiers set fire to the library on August 25 following German invasion of Belgium at the beginning of the First World War.
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1923 Japan • The Imperial University Library in Tokyo was destroyed and most of its contents, amounting to about 700,000 volumes, was lost. The Cabinet Library lost 70,000 volumes.
1937-1945 China
National University of Tsing Hua, Peking
• Losses during the Sine-Japanese War A great many private and public libraries were destroyed. The most important losses were:
200,000 out of 350,000 volumes including the card catalogue.
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1937-1945 ChinaUniversity Nan-k’ai, T’ien-chin.
Institute of Technology of He-pei, T’ien-chin.
Medical College of Hei-pei, Pao-ting.
Agriculture College of Hei-pei, Pao-ting.
National University of Hu-nan.
University of Nanking.
• More than 224,000 volumes were lost as a result of bombing in July 1937.
• Completely destroyed by bombs.
• Completely destroyed by bombs.
• Completely destroyed by bombs.
• Completely destroyed by bombs.
• 10% of collections disappeared after 1939. Probably transferred to Japan, together with the card catalogue.
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1937-1945 China
Royal Asian Society, Shang-hai
University of Shang-hai
Soochow University
• Collections transferred to Tokyo after 1939.
• 27% of collections in Western languages disappeared after 1939, as well as 40% of collections of works in Chinese. Probably transferred to Japan. Many other books damaged by water.
• More than 30% of the most important books disappeared during Japanese occupation 1937-1939
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1937 United States
• Hundreds of libraries in Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois and Mississippi were destroyed by floods.
1938 -1945 Czechlovakia
1939-1945Germany
• Total losses of books, manuscripts and incunabula were estimated at 2,000,000 volumes following the German occupation and after the Munich Conference of 1938 when Czechoslovakia was robbed of a great section of territory. Thousands of volumes were confiscated, burned, totally destroyed or sent to Germany.
• The Second World War proved disastrous for German libraries. Millions of books have been lost, although many of the most precious works have been preserved by storage elsewhere; it has been estimated that a third of all German books were destroyed.
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1976 Cambodia • Following their rise to power, the Khmer Rouge systematically began to destroy all vestiges of ‘corrupt’ culture. In the National Library of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge threw out and burned most of the books and all bibliographical records; less than 20% of the collection survived. The total amount of damage is unknown, but irreparable harm has been done to the country’s national heritage. The remaining material is seriously threatened by bad storage conditions, especially in the case of palm leaf manuscripts.
1978 United States
Stanford University Library
1984 The Netherlands
Library of the Dutch-South Africa Society
• Water main break caused major damage to 40,000 books plus 3,000 valuable items including miniature books.
• In January, left-wing activists destroyed the uniquely important library by throwing the books in the canals.
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
1986 United States
• In April, a deliberately-set fire destroyed the nation’s third largest public library. In the worst library fire in American history, nearly 400,000 volumes were completely destroyed and another 700,000 volumes were water-soaked.
1990 Kuwait
1993 BosniaNational Library
in Sarajevo
1994 Great Britain
Norwich Central Library
• Following the invasion by Iraqi troops, libraries and computer centers were destroyed (as in the case of the National Scientific and Technological Information Center removed to Baghdad).
• 90% of the collection was destroyed as a result of the civil war, with the loss of unique material for the study of Bosnian culture.
• On 1st August, a fire destroyed over 350,000 books as well as irreplaceable historical documents concerning the Norwich area.
(Memory of the World, UNESCO,1996).
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LIBRARIES AND COLLECTIONS (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL MATERIALS) DAMAGED OR DESTROYED
YEAR / LIBRARY
CAUSES OF DAMAGE OR DESTRUCTION
2003 Iraq
National Library
National Archives
National Museum
• Almost nothing remains of the library’s, archive’s and museum’s collections of millions of manuscripts, unpublished archival materials, books, and Iraqi newspapers.
(The Guardian, Tuesday April 15, 2003)
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DATA AND RECORDS LOSS STATISTIC
SECTORS 2000 - 2012
Business • 521,586,473 sensitive records were lost with a mean of 462,809 records per incident
Education
Government
Medical
• 11, 286, 999 sensitive records with a mean of 22,756 records per incident
• 182,500,510 sensitive records with a mean of 410,113 records per incident
• 11, 182,713 sensitive records with a mean of 41,112 records per incident.
Source: http:datalossdb.org/index/most_discussed [Retreived 19 Jan 2013]
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WHAT IS HAPPENING OUT THERE?
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State Sued For Deleting E-Mails (Sacramento Bee, February 2003).
The Securities and Exchange Commission fines five broker-dealers a total of $8.25 million for failure to preserve e-mail communications.
Andersen found guilty of obstruction of justice by shredding several thousand documents and deleted thousands of e-mails relating to the failed energy giant Enron. The firm is given the maximum penalty under the law, is no longer in the auditing business, and has lost tens of thousands of employees.
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PART OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY OF ARTHUR ANDERSEN
THE SCENE: Arthur Andersen's Houston branchSource: http://www.time.com/business/article/0,8599,263006,00.html[Retrieved 11 Jan. 2010]
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PART OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
Damaged Documents / Records
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- US Census Bureau e-records
- Satellite observations of Brazil
- e-records of the former East
German government
- The first e-mail message
- 1986 Doomsday project in the UK
- The Canadian NDOC logs
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Source: KATIE HAFNERPublished: November 10,2004
Even Digital Memories Can Fade
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ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED AND DAMAGED AND WILL CONTINUE TO SUFFER THIS FATE AS A RESULT OF:
Carelessness Accidental fires Arson Natural disasters Shelling and air attacks Enemy-action Partisans and liberators Revolutionaries and counter-
revolutionaries Inherent instability of the materials
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ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED AND DAMAGED AND WILL CONTINUE TO SUFFER THIS FATE AS A RESULT OF:
Poor storage facilities Lack of training Lack of staff discipline Lack of interest from peers Lack of interest from administrators Lack of interest from top management
and policy makers Biological agents : mould, insects and
rodents.
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COMPONENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
EXPLICIT TACIT
• Document• Records• Recordkeeping systems• Information systems• Published information• Organizations’
operations• Work processes• Support systems• Products • Services• Written policies• Written histories• Databases• People / staff• Recorded tacit
knowledge
• Knowledge from “the tricks of the trade” / expertise
• Collective work habits• Shared assumptions• Way work is understood• Ideas• Decision making• Experiences from the past • Buried values • Spirit • Aspiration• Core belief• Mindsets• Habit of thinking• How to • Embedded knowledge / skills• Lessons over time• Semantic understanding
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COMPONENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY
EXPLICIT TACIT
• Tacit feel• Unconscious interpretations• Axiomatic statements• Past success• Present success• Past mistakes • Present mistakes• Wisdom
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PREVENTING THE ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY LOSS : PRESERVING THE MEMORY
RECORDS & ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM) TECHNIQUES
• Recordkeeping systems • Preservation of recorded & digital information: - preventive - restorative - content preservation
• CoP
• Oral History
• Knowledge capture
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RECORDS & ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES : PREVENTIVE PRESERVATION
Storage facilities Environmental control Disaster control planning
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RECORDS AND ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES : RESTORATIVE
Preservation and Restoration of paper document – tissue repair
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RECORDS AND ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES : RESTORATIVE
Tissue Repair Encapsulation
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RECORDS AND ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES : RESTORATIVE
Binding
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RECORDS & ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES: RESTORATIVE
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Restoration of film archives
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RECORDS & ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES: RESTORATIVE
Restoration of photographic archives
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RECORDS & ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES: RESTORATIVE
Equipment for restoration of film archives and digital archives
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RECORDS & ARCHIVAL TECHNIQUES: RESTORATIVE
Equipment used for the restoration of paper-based records
National Archives of Korea 31Rusnah Johare & Alwi Mohd Yunus
ORAL HISTORY PRESERVES LEGACIES & CORPORATE MEMORY
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ORAL HISTORY PRESERVES LEGACIES & CORPORATE MEMORY
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Oral History is the systematic collection of living people’s testimony about their own experiences.
Oral History is not folklore, gossip, hearsay, or rumor.
Oral historians attempt to verify their findings, analyze them, and place them in an accurate historical context.
Oral historians are also concerned with storage of their findings for use by later scholars.
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RECORDED INTERVIEWS
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• Interviews need planning well in advance.
• Time is needed to ensure that the right questions are formulated and asked.
• Formulating questions is best achieved by interviewer who knows the subject knowledge very well (an effective interviewer is crucial).
• Questions must be analytical and descriptive.
• Produce a transcript from an audio recording and have it validated.
• Preserve the audio and video recording in a trusted digital repository for organizational or national memory.
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KEY STAGES OF OH INTERVIEWS
Planning
Identify Your Informant
Identify Interviewer
Interviewer to conduct
research on Informant
Interview sessions
Transcribing, Organize,
package and share
Preservation of recorded
interviews
Key Stages of OH
interviews
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ORAL HISTORY In OH projects, an interviewee
recalls an event for an interviewer who records the recollections and creates a historical record.
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ORAL HISTORY
Event
Interviewee
Interviewer Verify, analyse, accurate
historical context
historical record
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ORAL HISTORY
OH depends upon human memory and the spoken
word.
The means of collection can vary from taking notes by hand to elaborate electronic aural and video recordings.
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ORAL HISTORY
The human life span puts boundaries on the subject matter that we collect with OH.
We can only have one lifetime, our limits move forward in time with each generation.
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ORAL HISTORY
Can we afford to wait?
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ORAL HISTORY
This leads to the Oral Historian’s Anxiety Syndrome (Shopes, 2008), that panicky realization that irretrievable information is slipping away from us with every moment.
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CORPORATE MEMORY
Newspaper cutting of Merdeka
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CORPORATE ASSET
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LEGACY / CORPORATE ASSETS
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CORPORATE ASSET
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LEGACIES
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LEGACIES / MEMORY OF THE NATION
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MEMORY OF THE NATION
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MEMORY OF THE NATION
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MEMORY OF THE NATION
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CORPORATE ASSET
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CORPORATE ASSET
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CORPORATE ASSET
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CORPORATE ASSET
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CORPORATE ASSET
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CORPORATE ASSET
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LEGACIES
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LEGACY/ MEMORY OF THE NATION
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LEGACY / MEMORY OF THE NATION
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LEGACY / MEMORY OF THE NATION
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The importance of OH in the context of records and archival and corporate memory perspectives.
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ISSUES Folklore and experiences of
olden times face the grave of rapid extinction.
Disruption in the transmission of our heritage to the younger generation.
Writing long letters, memoirs, essays and keeping diaries are things of the past. 62Rusnah Johare & Alwi Mohd Yunus
ISSUES Attempts to re-write the
history of Malaysia, administrative history, corporate memory and legacies lies in the dearth of original or primary sources.
OH can help capture and preserve the unrecorded and generally unfamiliar memories of the past and present as evidences of history. 63Rusnah Johare & Alwi Mohd Yunus
RELEVANCE AND VALUE OF OH
OH can help capture and preserve the unrecorded and generally unfamiliar memories and tacit knowledge of the past and present as evidences of history.
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RELEVANCE AND VALUE OF OH
OH can play an important role in complementing and supplementing the documented evidences to enhance the sources on our 21st century legacies, corporate memory and the memory of the nation.
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Thank You
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