Records management is now an established professional discipline. But when, where, and how did it begin?  In this talk, Geoffrey Yeo, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London, will look at various stories that have been told about the origins of records management. Many records management professionals have claimed that its beginnings were in the United States in the 1940s, but others have proposed much earlier dates. Yeo will argue that people across the world have managed records for many centuries, and that the field of records management can trace its distant roots as far back as ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Drawing on his new book Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies (published in 2021), he will examine records management practices in a number of different cultures in the past, and will invite us to compare or contrast them with records management practices in our own age.

Register here: