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In this commemorative issue of Records Management Journal, milestones from the last 20 years of recordkeeping practice are being celebrated. This paper aims to provide a retrospective of the records continuum and examine its evolution, its impact and its influence, and to reference some of the controversy it has inspired.

The paper is based on a review of literature and a historical assessment, which are intended to contextualise and explain the continuum.

The continuum has a long history in Australian recordkeeping culture, but significant international research and theory have also fed into its development. The continuum has an enduring relevance and remains a fundamental tool for assessing and realigning recordkeeping practice today.

The paper is strongly supportive of the continuum approach, and as such is not an impartial assessment of the model and of the criticism that has been levelled against it.

It is hoped that the paper helps to foster further understanding and use of the records continuum model.

While owing a great deal to Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward, the paper aims to present a fresh perspective on continuum theory, in a way that helps to explain and encourage the adoption of continuum‐based approaches to recordkeeping.

The purpose of this paper is to assess examples of digital recordkeeping practice in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) and determine whether the discipline is tipping into a period where digital recordkeeping will change for the better, or whether it is tipping into digital oblivion. After assessing numerous case studies and examples, the paper also seeks to recommend some small but significant steps that can be taken to stem the tide and improve digital recordkeeping practices.

The approach is based on the authors' experiences and observations of recordkeeping practice in NSW.

Digital records and recordkeeping are at a critical juncture across all business environments. The tremendous benefits that digital records and recordkeeping can realise are in danger of being offset by significant threats, complexities and costs. All individuals, organisations and business environments need to take small steps now to start to make digital recordkeeping achievable and to make long‐term digital record sustainability possible.

The case studies presented in this paper provide both positive and negative digital recordkeeping scenarios for practitioners to consider. The paper also makes a number of practical suggestions that all recordkeeping environments can reflect on to tip the balance in favour of achievable and sustainable digital recordkeeping.

The paper is of value to all practitioners seeking to implement and sustain effective digital records management.

Optimising metadata implementation can significantly improve records management practice. This article aims to identify a number of important issues that should be considered in any implementation of recordkeeping metadata in order to optimise that implementation.

The research presented was part of a doctoral thesis “Purposeful data: the roles and purposes of recordkeeping metadata” which itself was part of a collaborative research project seeking to comprehensively specify and codify recordkeeping metadata. The purposes were identified via a research method known as warrant analysis.

Literary warrant identified that metadata fulfil seven different purposes: identifying all entities at all levels of aggregation; establishing connections between related entities; sustaining record structure, content and accessibility through time; administering record‐keeping business; documenting the history of recordkeeping events; facilitating discovery, understanding, retrieval and delivery; and documenting metadata attribution.

Recordkeeping systems should be designed with full awareness of the capacities of metadata and following a full assessment of the organisational needs that should be met by the system. Through better system design and well‐considered metadata implementation, records management operations in any environment can be significantly improved.

The paper establishes key roles of metadata and the importance of system design metadata implementation based on doctoral research.