In honor of Records and Information Management (RIM) Month, I did a little analysis of the membership of SAA’s Records Management Section.  I began this project in February by looking at the members signed up for the Records Management Section on SAA’s Connect community.  At that point, there were 1,324 members.

I broke down the membership into four categories, and I gleaned this information from what registrants entered as their Company Name.  (Close to 300 of those listed did not indicate their place of employment, so they do not appear in my graph.)

• academic — This includes anything with school, college, or university in the name including affiliated medical facilities.  Many registrants list only the top level in their company name, so I made no attempt to differentiate between those who work at a university archives vs. those who teach vs. those who have some other role at a university.
• business
• cultural/nonprofit — This includes archives, libraries, and museums that are not affiliated with academic institutions along with historical societies and religious organizations.
• government — I tried to make educated guesses about which entities are government-funded vs. those that are private organizations.  Although some academic institutions are also government entities, they are only counted in the academic list.

I’m happy to report there are now over 1,500 members registered for the Records Management Section.  Let’s keep growing!

In case anyone wants to sponsor some get-togethers to celebrate RIM month, I can also identify locales that have high concentrations of RMS members (15+):

• Austin, Texas
• Boston, MA (including Cambridge)
• Chicago, IL
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY (even greater when you include Bronx, Brooklyn, and other nearby locations)
• Philadelphia, PA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC (even greater when you include Arlington, VA and Bethesda, MD and other environs)

Stay tuned to this blog as well as the listserv for more nods to RIM month.