Assessment of university archives management practices

Abstract

Purpose Archives and records are important resources for individuals, organizations and the country. The academic archives are created and maintained for the effective execution of university educational and corporate functions. The archives management practices in universities are being studied in the developed countries; however, a scarcity of empirical research is observed in the context of developing countries, for instance, Pakistan. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess the archives management practices performed in the archival units of University of the Punjab (UoP), Lahore, in association with the successful execution of university educational functions. Design/methodology/approach A structured survey questionnaire was developed to collect responses from the record-keepers and archives monitoring staff using a complete enumerative (census) approach. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS 23.0 in addition to structural equation modeling (SEM) run in AMOS 22v. Findings The findings of this study revealed an inconsistency regarding the policies and procedures, arrangement and filing records and access and retrieval due to the practice of self-developed procedures in the UoP archival units. Although archives management practices have significant impact on university academic as well as research-related functions, however, there is lack of centralized and standardized practices for archiving records in the UoP. Lack of professional/trained staff and policy document are key limitations in building systematic and standardized archives management system in academic intuitions, particularly in the UoP. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study in Pakistan that has explored archives management practices used in university archives. It also contributes theoretically and methodologically through the underpinnings of archival principles in association with university functions and developing a validated scale to explore archives management practices in universities. The findings of this study may be helpful for the concerned bodies, university administrations and archives managers to establish, manage and improve the academic archives systematically.