  In quantum gravity, one seeks to combine quantum mechanics and general
relativity. In such attempts, one comes across the `problem of time' impasse:
the notion of time is conceptually different in each of these theories. In this
paper, I consider the timeless records approach toward resolving this. Records
are localized, information-containing subconfigurations of a single instant.
Records theory is the study of these and of how science (or history) is to be
abstracted from correlations between them. I critically evaluate motivations
for this approach that have previously appeared in the literature. I provide a
ground-level structure for records theory and discuss what kind of further
tools are needed, illustrated with some toy models: ordinary mechanics,
relatonal particle dynamics, detector models and inhomogeneous perturbations
about homogeneous cosmology.
