What Spock would say about Records Management

I imagine the conversation would go something like this:

Captain Kirk: Spock, there’s Files on the starboard bow.  We’ve got to retrieve them. Before Klingons find them, learn our beaming codes and forward an email to the universe with our ACC records.

Spock: Highly logical Captain.

Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy: Damn it Jim, he’s a Vulcan not a Records Manager!

Spock: I realize that Filing does have its fascination, even under circumstances such as these, but I neither enjoy the idea of Filing nor am I frightened of it. It simply exists, and I will do whatever logically needs to be done.

This would definitely be Spock’s response and when you consider it, he is right. A well thought out filing and records management system at its heart is pure logic. How to categorize and classify material, quickly identify it, store it, retrieve it and return it to its correct location, add to it, archive it and finally destroy it *evil Klingon laugh*. It is the nirvana of logic and order.

This got us thinking; throughout history the story of man is based around categorizing, identifying and filing for recall. Noah marched animals into the Ark in 2×2, could this have been the precursor of a terminal digit system perhaps? The history of science is all about categorizing systems and rules, for example Newton’s three laws and the discoveries of the 18th and 19th century. See also Darwin’s study of species evolution and the need to derive categories and systems to understand what was happening on the planet.

Even Einstein started as a patent clerk receiving, categorizing and filing. Sure he went on to postulate the theory of relativity but this was small potatoes compared to his filing experiences. In his memoirs titled “E=MC-Ezi2”, he described his experience as a filing clerk as the acme of his career.

Records management is a true science that underpins the development of our society, so much so that there should be a medal, an FC (Filing Cross) if you will, for those that have shown extraordinary valour whilst file in the face of extreme odds.

Now when someone asks you “What does the Spock say?” Instead of replying “Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding”, you can with confidently advise them that Spock would actually say “Proceed at warp speed level 11 to file where no man has filed before”.

File long and prosper.