Introduction

The title of our critical article review is Records professionals: an invisible profession in Malaysia. It is written by Aliza Ismail and Adnan Jamaludin from Faculty of Information Management, University Technology MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia. The purpose is this study seeks to study and to examine the existence of records professionals and their role in Malaysian organizations. Among the question are Who are the records professionals in Malaysian organizations? and also What are their roles in ensuring the documentary evidence of the organization records is managed accordingly? In this article they focus on the question whether the company has the role of the record professional in their organizations. Among the question that they ask they will get the answer like sorry...never heard of it before or pardon me...what did you say? or they just pretend not to hear of what the question asked. This is because they are not aware or not realize that this type of profession is needed in the company but it is seems invisible because their role is not frequently needed. Definitely the question will reveal what is the main finding of the article. It is very important because from the result from the question ask we can evaluate and make improvement in record professions. From the answer, we can conclude that not many people know the record profession work and whether the organizations are having such professions. So, the authors conduct the research, and the main idea is to examine the existence of records professionals and their role in Malaysian organizations.

Body

Purpose The author poses about the ignorance of public about the profession of Record professional in the organization. In our opinion, based on the journal the author wants to examine the existence of records professionals and their roles in Malaysian governmentcontrolled companies. In my review the author research paper is good because it mentions about the record profession that public did not know. They did not realize about their role in maintaining the record of one organization. Most of the organizations records are not being managed by the record professionals by qualification. Method In these studies they are using a few approaches, to examine the existence of real records professionals in Malaysian government-controlled companies. The study compares case studies done in six government-controlled companies. The interviews were conducted with the persons handling the records and information in the organizations. The interviews were describe and analyzed manually to obtain the comparative data from each case. The data collected from the interview are then transcribed, coded and analyzed. Comparative analysis was done to search for similarities and differences in each of the cases. Hypothesis Case 1: Authors find about absence of qualified record professionals in the organization at the national oil company wholly owned by government sector. When we talk about the record professionals in record department, an importance knowledge that they must have is a personnel education and experience in record management such as experience in the Library Sciences. The organization may face with the problems when they retain employees who do not have knowledge about the record management. So, based on this problem, to make sure the individual expert in their task, the companies should send them to training and it automatically will increase the cost. Case 2: Based on the interview in the conventional services, author find that record

professionals at those places are not recognized as well in the government organization. They believed in managing the records does not need special skill and they just recruit employees 2

based on the job vacancy and they choose from the education background and not the experiences and ability. They think that the information is just to use for their current purpose and not for future. Case 3: Developer of Malaysias administrative capital of Putrajaya, author finds the leader of the Document System Units is grade in Public Administrative. The issues is she is not trained in records and archives management or information management and this situation not suitable for organization which is they are responsible in handling the project that need to be dealing with document that received, sorted and routed to the address. The organization does realize the bad effect when they do not have record professional. Case 4: This is the countrys leading railway service operator wholly owned by the government that also has related with the absence of records professionals. The organization only has employees who can manage the predictable record. They not have specific person which is can conduct the electronic management records. The organizational needs help from outsider

person from other organization which has specific knowledge in electronic record to manage their electronic database such as from Information Technology Department. Case 5: This is the corporate organization wholly owned by the Minister of Finance. This organization shows that records professional are not regarded. These organizations like to choose employees who have multi-skill at some job position because they not need specific employees for specific position. For the example, the task for an employees job is engineers but the top management in the organization wants that employees have other skill such as information management skills. Case 6: The Malaysias prominent investment organization is responsible for promoting share ownership among Bumiputera in corporate sector. Record professional responsible for this task is from the Library Science graduate from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). Even in suitably place, the aspects of responsibility do not fully utilize the records and archives competency. A very interesting parts as the record professional is placed at a very senior level in the organization structure but the function of the record management is not applied to the whole organization.

Strengths and Usefulness of the Article

Based on our readings, we can define that one of the strengths of this article is the author is very inspired to write about this topic which is most of the Malaysian do not recognize about the existence. For example, when the author randomly asking the people about records professionals in Malaysia, most of the people answer that they never heard about it and do not know what is records professionals. So, from this writing the Malaysian people will know about the existence of records professionals in Malaysian organizations and people will realize the important of this profession. Based on this article, we also define that this issues is timely which is the topic is currently happen is Malaysia. From this writing, we realize that many of Malaysian organization did not implement the real records management. That can be prove when the author were utilizes multiples case study approach in Malaysian government-controlled companies. So, from this finding we consider that this article can guide the companies to have a real records professional and the companies also will notice the benefits they can get when they implement the real records management program.

Weaknesses and Limitations of the Article

Based on our readings, this research did not finish in overall. The researcher only selects six of the government-controlled companies. This research did not include the private sector companies. So, the article did not fully utilize about the records professionals in

Malaysian companies, which is having government and private sectors. Based on the article, we define that the author did not elaborate about what is the roles to ensuring the documentary evidence of the organization records will be managed accordingly. This article does not have clear explanation about the roles. When we read the article, we cannot define what the main roles of records professionals are. It should have in the articles because that is one of the research questions.

Recommendations

1. The researcher should do the research in both sectors, which is government and private sectors. This is because if the researcher only does interview and study in government sector, the results will not be fully collect and the findings will inadequate.

2. The author should clearly explain about the important roles of records professionals. The explanation should be elaborate clearly because the main research question is about the roles. So, to make sure the readers understand the main topic, the article should have a complete explanations and finding.

Conclusion

For all the cases, it can be seen that the role and functions of records management can be with either the administrators for paper-based records or the information technology (IT) personnel for electronic records. The record manager could either be an accountant, auditor, or the manager of the company itself. It can be concluded that there are no real records professionals by qualifications with records management competencies in the six organizations. Personnel given the task of handling the organization records are from different department other than records management. Since the right professionals are not in place, the present records personnel are not able to demonstrate a professional way of the knowledge of record management and be able describe and make available the facts and data.

It is important for the Malaysian organizations to realize that their records and information are in fact at risk of not being managed by the right professionals. Malaysian records professionals, especially the archivists at the National Archives of Malaysia, to continue their role to make a shift in recordkeeping and records functional requirement. They should be considering the idea of records audit strategies to enhance their justification for mandatory existence in order to meet the challenges of the changing society.

We have to wait when the records professionals are able to redefine their role in the society and they would be recognized as key professionals who could contribute positively towards nation building. In order to succeed the profession needs to acquire a new professional status. We must make sure the effective management of organization records and information as essential evidence and organizational assets to ensure their competitive advantage.

References

Jamaludin, A. I. (2011). Records professionals: an invisible profession in Malaysia. Records Management Journal, 69-75. McLeod, J. (2012). Thoughts on the opportunities for records professionals of the open access, open data agenda. Records Management Journal, 92-97. Mornizan Yahya, L. F. (2011). Management of Administrative Records II- The compilation of Reference. Harmoni Publications & Distributors Sdn. Bhd. YUNUS, A. M. (2004). Microsoft Word - Kerjaya_Pengurus_Rekod.doc Kerjaya_Pengurus_Rekod.pdf:. Retrieved October 22 October 2013, 2013, from Career of Record Manager :From Malaysia Perpective: http://www2.arkib.gov.my/ksprj/muat_turun/kertaskerja/Kerjaya_Pengurus_Rekod.pdf Yusof, Z. M. (1998). How records management could help Malaysia materialize its Vision 2020. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 169-176.