I get lots of questions from people who are new to the role of Club Records Officer about what the role involves and how to do it, so I thought I’d write it all down into a multi-part guide.
This first part will cover the basics of what the role involves, and then subsequent parts will take a deeper look at some of the specific procedures.
Before I start, it’s worth saying that this series will specifically look at the role of the records officer as it’s typically defined in the UK. I’m sure other countries have similar roles and procedures, but this information is UK specific.
The role of the Club Records Officer is not defined formally in the Rules of Shooting. It is mentioned a few times in the Shooting Administrative Procedures, but there is no formal definition there either, so everything written here is based on tradition and norms rather than anything more formal.
Core Duties of the Records Officer
The basic job of the Records Officer is to keep track of the scores club members shoot. This is not just for fun, but for 3 main purposes –
- To keep track of club record scores.
- To calculate archers’ handicaps.
- To calculate archers’ classifications.
In the past, these three tasks were done quite manually, with written records books and lots of manual calculations. Some clubs still do this, but over the years many clubs developed their own computer-based tools for doing this, ranging from simple spreadsheets, custom written software, or cloud-based web applications.
There are also some very good bits of commercial software out there, such as Golden Records, which are popular choices for managing all of the clubs records (and other administrative tasks). If you are a provider of such software, please drop a link in the comments and I will add it to this page.
I would recommend that new Records Officers seriously consider software-based solutions rather than manual ones. The tasks that the records officer needs to do are relatively simple, maybe taking a few minutes per archer per week on average, but in a club of 100 members that could easily turn into a big job taking many hours per week. Software-based solutions can cut this down dramatically.
What Does the Records Officer Need to Know?
Many of the jobs of the records officer require them to be quite familiar with the ArcheryGB Rules of Shooting(RoS) and Shooting Administrative Procedures (SAPs). Even when using software which automates much of the work, and enforces the rules, it’s always useful to know how to do the processes manually and answer questions from club members.
Generally, the records officer needs to understand the rules of shooting well enough to validate any scores that they process. In order to do that, they might need to know –
- All the different archery rounds
- Who normally shoots which rounds
- How different types of scoring is used for different rounds
They also need to understand the specific procedures around handicaps and classification, which will be outlined in future articles.
The RoS and SAPs can be downloaded for free from the ArcheryGB website, or printed and bound copies can be bought from retailers
What Does a Records Officer Actually Do?
Normally, the trigger for a records officer to do something is an archer giving them a score. A typical workflow for a club records officer would look like this –
Also, there are a couple of one-off tasks that need to be done at the beginning of each new outdoor season (on the 1st January) and at the beginning of each indoor season (1st July). These will be covered in future articles.
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