Electronic Records: The View From Beyond OZ

Paper for Australian Society of Archivists Conference, Alice Springs, May 1996. (A shortened version of this paper was delivered at the conference)

Glenda I. Acland

Electronic Records: The View From Beyond OZ

Introduction
During this decade it has become mandatory for archives conferences to include specific sessions on Electronic Records. The professional associations in several countries have special interest groups on Electronic Records and in 1993/4 three of the significant English language archival journals, The American Archivist, Archivaria and our own Archives and Manuscripts, published theme issues relating to electronic records. The ICA established a Committee on Electronic Records as a result of resolutions of the Montreal Congress in 1992. In addition to the work that has been undertaken by national archival institutions into recordkeeping in the electronic environment, most notably by the Canadians, Dutch and Australians, but also I understand in Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries1, two major research projects have been funded at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA and the University of British Columbia in Canada. In the last couple of years there have been several noteworthy initiatives such as the SAA's Electronic Records Strategies Task Force or, on this continent, the Australian Council of Archives Workshop to facilitate a common position paper Corporate Memory in the Electronic Age. Continuing education initiatives have facilitated the upgrading of knowledge and skills for archives and records professionals. It is not surprising then, with all this activity, that the archival literature on electronic records has flourished, particularly since 1992. Australia can claim a fair contribution to this and one which reflects its own unique recordkeeping tradition. But despite all this activity, and what appears to be some emerging consensus on the archival requirements for recordkeeping in the electronic environment, there remains a good deal of unconsciousness about the matter of electronic records.

During this decade it has NOT become mandatory for conferences of Information Technology (IT), Systems or Management professionals to include sessions on electronic recordkeeping. I am aware of none but would like to be in error - if indeed the evidence exists. Yet these professions are vital partners in the successful achievement of our mission in contemporary society. Indeed, some sectors of the IT industry believe they have already successfully been providing for electronic "records" and for "archiving". As a profession we have yet effectively to make the connections necessary to ensure successful recordkeeping in an electronic environment. We must understand clearly the nature of records and enunciate precisely the essence of recordkeeping as a unified professional core and have developed critical strategies and implementable and understandable solutions before we will be accepted as an indispensable player in the information age. The strategies are clearly out there, the solutions are being developed or are about to come off the drawing board, but the acceptance, which is the critical success factor, has yet to materialise.

Our business is records - the evidence of organisational and social activity - and we should not forget that ensuring evidence through time is our prime directive. Our business is records, not just non-current paper records, and we must move beyond traditional perceptions that our contribution is media confined as well as currency delineated. Here in this country, as well as beyond its physical shores, some significant inroads in the work place are now being made to ensure effective and successful recordkeeping across time, using policies, strategies, common positions, standards and exemplary practice. While computer science specialists have, generally speaking, overlooked the important difference between information and records, we as archivists KNOW there is a critical difference and are now conveying this beyond our traditional market and audience. When an IT Conference is held which has a major session on the criticality of understanding and building recordkeeping requirements into information systems, to ensure evidence through time, then our profession will know it is on the way to success in the electronic environment.

Background
So what is the current state of play in relation to electronic records beyond "oz"? That was the deceptively simple question which Greg Coleman posed when he contacted me late last year and asked if I would give a paper on electronic records at this conference, suggesting that observations and knowledge gleaned about electronic records in North America from my most recent overseas conference/ study venture, in September last year, would inform the audience. 2

When I sat down to write this paper, I reflected that professional activity in electronic records is developing rapidly as is the information technology on which it depends and that I was aware of a range of developments or issues of interest that had occurred since September. I was also aware that a paper such as this could never hope to cover all developments or be totally up to date, but with a little help from overseas colleagues I could easily reach out beyond "oz" 3 to update and clarify recent developments. So in this paper I have attempted to go "beyond oz" to present in an accessible way a potpourri of items and developments relating to electronic records together with some observations on the current state of play.

Acknowledgments
At this point I would like to acknowledge a number of overseas colleagues who have contributed to this paper both specifically when requested and/or through their ongoing generosity in sharing details of their professional activities with me: Kim Barata, Rick Barry, David Bearman, Terry Cook, Richard Cox, Wendy Duff, Luciana Duranti, Terry Eastwood, Margaret Hedstrom, John McDonald, Darryl Prescott and Harold Thiele.

The Current State of Play
The session at which I spoke at the SAA last year, on the Electronic Records Strategies Task Force Report,44 focussed on turning archival attention outwards to the issues, ideas, individuals and organisations beyond the recognised archival profession who are shaping the policies, standards and practices for "archiving" electronic information55 and examined ways to achieve this and to measure the success or otherwise of such efforts. There was general agreement that a short window of opportunity existed to achieve this goal and to prevaricate or to avoid engaging with this challenge would be to the peril of the continued health of the profession as well as failing in our prime directive. Beyond the necessity to ensure agreed, implementable and effective recordkeeping strategies at a whole of profession level, and notwithstanding the critical and influential role our national and state archival institutions can play as agents of change, I believe this imperative is particularly critical for archival practitioners at the corporate level. 6 Last year, in a powerful article intended for educated but popular consumption, Terry Cook chillingly exposed a modern day reality - that many organisations are losing their corporate memory with potentially devastating consequences. 7 This IS the stark reality of the current state of play with electronic records in most organisations. At the corporate level there is now a slow awakening to a problem which has yet to be clearly articulated in a cross-disciplinary, accepted way and a small movement to find more sensible and viable solutions than the more and more powerful search engines strategy in favour in IT circles. There is the beginning of a consciousness.

During the last couple of weeks I asked several of my overseas correspondents how they viewed the current state of play with electronic records. The responses were generally optimistic and measurable progress is being reported. Consultant Rick Barry, who will be a keynote speaker at this year's RMAA Convention8, reflected on how far the profession had come since the days of the UN ACCIS Technical Panel on Electronic Records Management whose report published in 19909 has significantly influenced professional direction since then. He sees a more mature profession now, but one which has "tended to let the best become the enemy of the good. Trying to solve everything to the perfect satisfaction of the rigorous demands of archives and records management teachings and practices has resulted in our coming up very short on implementation experience," 10 resorting to unsatisfactory stop gap or interim measures such as the print to paper option. We need more experience with the practical implementation of electronic records systems as part of broader information management and records management systems, and Rick suggested tackling the electronic records issue "a byte at a time". He notes it will take "an extraordinary degree of coordination and leadership among information management, information technology, archives and records management professionals, and managers" to achieve success. Margaret Hedstrom, who is now an Associate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, noted, "I ... think that the archivists working with electronic records are starting to connect with some important communities-- at least in an ad hoc manner -- like some of the key people in records management, software design, and evidence" 11 a point noted by other North American correspondents. 12 Indeed a similar comment could be made of the Australian community, (Tony Poynton of Canon notwithstanding 13) evidenced recently in a cross disciplinary working party I have been involved with at the University of Queensland. A range of IT developers, managers and software suppliers have had their awareness to the need for new initiatives to ensure successful electronic recordkeeping heightened in recent times and many have delved into the Pittsburgh Functional Requirements and the exemplary work being done by the National Archives of Canada, as well as anticipating the fallout from our own Records Management Standards.

What Has Been Happening Out There? Realising that a proportion of conference attendees would still not have access to the magic of Internet, I thought it would be useful to take some time now for a quick, selective update on what I believe to be the highlights of the recent past with respect to Electronic Recordkeeping. The well-informed Internet surfers amongst you will no doubt be aware of these developments, and more. I should also say that I have deliberately slanted these comments to the perspective of the corporate archivist14 as, apart from this being my own area of interest, I believe that the true test of the reality of implementation at this level will shape the electronic records future. The work being undertaken at the corporate level is not generally as accessible as, say, the excellent work being done by the National Archives of Canada, currently on a prototype to illustrate how recordkeeping can be reflected inside the design of automated workflow, 15 or in this country, the policy, strategies and guidelines coming out of Australian Archives and The Records Management Office of New South Wales. 16 So, what has been happening out there?

The ICA Committee on Electronic Records17
At the International level, the ICA Committee on Electronic Records, chaired by John McDonald of the National Archives of Canada and comprising members from an international organisation and the national archives of the USA, Switzerland, Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Singapore, Norway and Australia, has the responsibility for helping archives around the world posit
ion themselves to deal with electronic records, keeping in mind the substantial variation that exists in the organisational and cultural makeup of archives at the international level. 18

The Committee early concluded that archives, regardless of their cultural or organisational situation, would have to be active rather than passive if they were to have a meaningful role in ensuring the ongoing preservation of electronic records and that they would have to position themselves as much as possible towards the front end of the records life cycle if they wanted to ensure that an archival electronic record was preserved. This led to the decision to develop a guide that would help archives accomplish this goal. The four chapters of this comprehensive guide are being developed by teams of committee members to cover:

• the legal, organisational, and societal trends that impact on modern record keeping;
• the characteristics of electronic records, the types of electronic records that exist in various technology environments and the nature of the functions that are required to support their ongoing integrity and accessibility;
• the strategies and tactics that archives can employ to address the management of electronic records;
• and an examination of each of these strategies and tactics in terms of their organisational, legal and technological implications for archives.

This work is being complemented by a survey of electronic records activities around the world as well as by an analysis of the evolving literature on electronic records, a draft of which has been prepared by Alf Erlandsson of the International Monetary Fund. Exposure drafts of these products will be shared with the international archival community immediately prior to and during the ICA Congress in Beijing this September.

While the focus of this work is at archives institutions at the national level, the products of this Committee should be of immense use to the profession at large. The speed with which this committee has conducted its business is, I believe, quite remarkable for an ICA body, reflective of the urgency with which the mandate needed to be addressed. Not only is there considerable pressure on archival institutions to deal with the issue primarily viewed as the appraisal of electronic records but also there is a brief window of opportunity for the profession to adapt and market its unique skills in managing evidence to the changing ways in which organisations now do business. The products of the ICA Electronic Records Committee have every indication of becoming essential to the professional knowledge base and I urge you all to familiarise yourself with them when they become available.

Research Projects
The two major research projects in the area of electronic records are those of which most Australian archivists will by now be aware at the University of Pittsburgh in the USA and the University of British Columbia in Canada. Both projects have been well funded for a three year period and have involved teams of well respected archivists working with other disciplinary specialists and utilising cross-national experiences. 19 Both have touched these shores. While the Pittsburgh project has now concluded, the University of British Columbia project is two thirds of the way through. These projects have the same fundamental mission, to provide for the protection of electronic evidence, though they are expressed from different perspectives and will result in rather different products.

The University of British Columbia
Luciana Duranti and Terry Eastwood of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia are engaged in the project, "The Preservation of the Integrity of Electronic Records" funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC). The project which commenced in April 1994 aimed at identifying the best methods for preserving the reliability and authenticity of electronic records over time, on the basis of diplomatic and archival theory. The specific objectives of the project to be achieved using the diplomatic and archival sciences are:

• to establish what a record is in principle and how it can be recognised in an electronic environment;
• to determine what kind of electronic systems generate records;
• to formulate criteria that allow for the appropriate segregation of records from all other types of information in electronic systems that generate different kinds of information;
• to define the conceptual requirements for guaranteeing the reliability and authenticity of records in electronic systems;
• to articulate the administrative, procedural and technical methods for the implementation of those requirements; and
• to assess those methods against different administrative, juridical, cultural and disciplinary points of view. 20

The conceptual findings of the research have been graphically represented with the cooperation of the United States Department of Defense, using IDEF (Integrated Defined Language) Modelling Methodology and Technology, 21 and the resulting models of activities and entities have been widely distributed for feedback.

Among these findings, the most significant are:

1. the integrity of electronic records can only be preserved if they are managed together with all the other records belonging in the same fonds;
2. the integrity of records is best preserved by entrusting the creating body with responsibility for their reliability and the preserving body with responsibility for their authenticity;
3. the reliability of records is best ensured by procedural rules embedded in the overall recordkeeping system, and both the reliability and authenticity of records are best guaranteed by emphasising documentary context over the transactional and administrative one; and
4. the life-cycle of managerial activity can be neatly divided into two phases--each under one exclusive competence; one directed to the control of the creation and maintenance of reliable active records, and the other directed to the preservation of authentic inactive records.

These findings do not sit at all comfortably with the direction Australian archivists are heading in relation to electronic records and it will be interesting to monitor both the Canadian and international reaction to this work. The research team has now prepared another proposal for an international collaborative effort aiming at detailing the activities, procedural rules, entities, and their interrelationships and attributes, involved in the second phase of the management of records. The results of the research on the first phase will be presented in the major product of the research, a book to be completed in 1997. Reports of the project will continue to be published in the Italian based multilingual international journal, Archivi & Computer.22

US Department of Defense
For those interested in following the work of the US Department of Defense in electronic records management since 1993, including the more than 30 reports of the Records Management Task Force and its co-operative work with the University of British Columbia, explore their web site23 as well as an article for the latest issue of Archivi & Computer.24

The University of Pittsburgh
The objectives of this project have been widely distributed, essentially to develop a set of well-defined recordkeeping functional requirements - satisfying all the various legal, administrative, and other needs of a particular organisation - which can be used in the design and implementation of electronic information systems. The project as such has been concluded with the primary products of the research, Literary Warrant Supporting Functional Requirements, Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping, Production Rules Version of the Functional Requirements and the Metadata Specification Derived from the Functional Requirements have been made available on a specific website, 25 along with the various publications and reports that were generated by the work of the project. The US funding body, the NHPRC (National Historical Publications and Research Commission), should be well satisfied with its US$ 360 000 investment. The work of the first two years of this project has been well reported in Australia as elsewhere but the final stage is less well known. I thought it might also be useful to look at this and examine the impact of this far reaching and influential research.

In the project's final stage an Advisory Group of Experts met in Pittsburgh in early February this year to "hear reports about the use of the functional requirements, discuss the results of the project, and consider future work on the recordkeeping functional requirements beyond the scope of this project." 26 Apart from the usual project cast, the "experts" this time included representatives from institutions which were implementing the project's products, several also with the aid of NHPRC grants. The expert implementers were from the City of Philadelphia, the State of Vermont, Indiana University and the State University of New York, as well as John McDonald from the National Archives of Canada and consultant Rick Barry whose client was The World Bank.

The most exciting of the implementations from my perspective as a corporate archivist and one which I believe warrants close scrutiny is the Philadelphia Electronic Records Project (PERP). PERP is funded by NHPRC for two years to promulgate municipal standards and exercise control over electronic records and electronic record systems created by the City of Philadelphia. It has been linked into the City's concentrated effort to use information technology to streamline service delivery. The project is overseen by a specially appointed Electronic Records Manager and a co-operative working group, the Electronic Records Group (ERG), which comprises IT, MIS and Records Management staff. The first phase of the project involved "the adaptation of the Pittsburgh Business Acceptable Communications (BAC) model, to specify 'built-in' recordkeeping metadata functionality for a new, paperless, human resource information system (HRIS) for the City's Personnel Department". 27 The ERG specifically designed recordkeeping metadata functionality that will be incorporated into the new HRIS. This specification was included in the RFP for the system and includes a listing of the record-generating transactions, a description of the adapted BAC model, and describes the functioning of a metadata object management system (MOMS), necessary to capture the metadata encapsulated objects or electronic records. MOMS will be an internal software module of HRIS to oversee the creation, security and automated deletion of electronic record objects. 28 After the system has been implemented and the performance evaluated it is planned to issue the metadata requirements as a City-wide Standard for all new, litigation-prone municipal electronic information systems. This will be a project to watch. In addition to the section in the Report of the February Experts Meeting, a detailed report of the first stage of the Philadelphia Electronic Records Project and its other goals is available on the Pitt Web Server, which will be used as a clearing house for access to reports and products of projects such as this.

The implementation at the Vermont State Archives was designed to take advantage of an on-going effort to re-engineer government services, known as the Vermont Information Strategy Plan (VISP), which viewed government as having a single mission supported by seven high level business areas that were common across structural lines. Under the high level business area "Government Support Operations", is the business function "Manage Information". Responsible recordkeeping is, as we have emphasised in this country, not exclusively a support function but is an essential democratic accountability requiring support from the decision-making level of government. The recognition of this resulted in "Accountability" being added to the functional area of VISP business area "Policy and Planning". The addition of "accountability" and its decomposition into distinct functions and activities provided the overall framework for the project and recordkeeping became its focus. This shift away from the records themselves to recordkeeping is a major re-orientation for a US agency and requires a significant mindset change for our US colleagues, as indeed it may still for some in this country. 29 Further details on this project will also be available from the Pitt web site. My inspiration from reading of the Vermont Project was tempered somewhat after communicating with Harold Thiele, the Electronic Records Archivist at Vermont State Archives, who advised, "Our theoretical work has had a difficult time being translated into political reality. Unlike Australia, Vermont does not have a unified public records and archives act ..... with responsibility for public records divided amongst several agencies answering to different constitutional officers." 30 Thiele recounted the largely unsuccessful efforts of the State Archives to have what we call a recordkeeping mission accepted. He goes on to add that, notwithstanding, the Archives has now basically regrouped and has set about producing "draft" technical bulletins dealing with various areas of electronic records management and is now going the route of developing partnerships with various agencies that can issue policy or make recommendations that support their efforts, including the state's information resource management committee. 31

Another Pittsburgh implementation is the Indiana University Electronic Records Project which can be regarded as a test site for the ideas and concepts regarding functional analysis, functional requirements, and the critical role of metadata. 32 Full details of this project are available from the Indiana University web site. 33 There isn't time here to go into details on the other projects, for example at The World Bank, 34 which are implementing the products of the Pittsburgh project, but I urge you to absorb the reports available on these.

So what will the influence of the Pittsburgh project be and where is this work going now the project is concluded? Wendy Duff's forthcoming doctoral dissertation, "The Influence of Literary Warrant on the Acceptance and Credibility of the Functional Requirements for Recordkeeping" will test the view that other professions would become more aware of the warrant or justification for functional requirements for recordkeeping if these were supported by statements drawn from authoritative sources such as laws, regulations, standards and best practices promulgated by lawyers, auditors, information technologists, business managers, records managers and the medical profession. Archivists and/or records managers could then use these statements as proof or justification that organisations and individuals must adhere to the requirements because they are based on practices established by their own profession or industry. 35 At the Pittsburgh project wrap up experts meeting, the second day was given to discussing the lessons learned and future directions for research. The need to further develop the area of warrant was agreed as significant, recognising both, that the "Americanness" of the work to date would need to be broadened if the requirements are to be used internationally and, that different environments will need different warrants. Amongst the 10 identified issues to go forward were having the BAC model accepted as a standard; clarification and rigour in use of terminology; the need for more case studies and the development of a model to demonstrate how the functional requirements can be integrated into the business process; a study of the economics of complying with the functional requirements and educational initiatives. 36

The Ongoing Agenda
And so the work goes on. As I wrote, I heard of more developments in the US arising from the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and the AIIM standardisation effort currently underway for commerce on the net. Conferences on ERM are flourishing with an experts meeting on records migration in Fermo (one of the Macerata series) in April, a multidisciplinary Forum on Electronic Records to be held in Brussels this December, and a volume on appraisal of electronic records being published by the Norwegian Archives. Margaret Hedstrom, has organised a conference in late June to sum up what research has been done on electronic records and define where it needs to go from here. Her School is establishing a web site shortly which will point to results and reports from many Electronic Records projects. 37.

Conclusion
Away from the virtual world of "oz" and late at night my "paper mind" 38 still greatly enjoys the pre-sleep ritual of digesting a chapter or so of a good novel or book of some sort. In a provocative treatise, "The Unconscious Civilization" 39, Canadian writer John Ralston Saul, postulates that our modern society is only superficially based on the individual and democracy, but rather is subservient to the ideology of corporatism and its accompanying conformism. He observes a society seemingly devoid of useful memory and even when it does remember accurately, this has little impact on actions. Nowhere is this more apparent, he examples, than in the discipline of economics. "If economists were doctors", he writes, "they would be mired in malpractice suits" 40. He notes, "Our actions are only related to tiny, narrow bands of specialist information, usually based on a false idea of measurement rather than upon knowledge - that is understanding - of the larger picture41. Saul argues that modern society scorns knowledge of itself and presents the paradox that knowledge itself has not made us conscious. There are compelling realisations for recordkeepers mirrored in his words.

Angelika Menne-Haritz, stretches beyond our existing articulations on the nature and power of records with this analysis: "Records are not true. They are always purposeful, even if they do not name their purpose literally. No law can be strong enough to make people do something that has no meaning for their activities. They create records because they need them, not because someone ordered their creation. Accountability is a social benefit which is generally accepted in democratic societies. But the steering and controlling of cooperative decision-making processes is a very direct reason for the creation of records, because with their help all efforts can be effectively oriented to a common goal or purpose. That is the proper reason for the creation of records. Records are not made for posterity. Records are created because they are needed by those who create them, not as information collection but as intellectual working tools for the steering of cooperative decision-making processes. And records are therefore reliable. The better they have served their primary purposes of initiating and controlling cooperative, purposeful, intellectual work, the more they are authentic and trustworthy in elucidating those processes for secondary purposes, be it evidential or informational."42

Just as Saul's focus is on adjusting the equilibrium of modern society from the power of consciousness, we too as a profession must progress through to the conscious state before the professional equilibrium can be adjusted. We may now have the knowledge but ARE we still an unconscious profession? In transmitting our knowledge into consciousness we must awaken others from the unconscious state - our partners necessary for the fulfilment of the successful recordkeeping mission. Menne-Haritz is starkly accurate in her observation that, "No law can be strong enough to make people do something that has no meaning for their activities." Beyond democratic accountability and indeed more compelling in the reality of organisational activity, effective recordkeeping will only occur if it is needed to initiate and control, "cooperative, purposeful, intellectual work". And for that need to continue to be successfully addressed, the full consciousness of knowledge must not only be realised but it must also be accepted and applied beyond the regulatory framework.

1 "Overviewing the European scene there is much difference in acquired knowledge and experience with electronic records between member states. Roughly one could say that most experience is concentrated in the Nordic countries and Switzerland".
Hans Hofman and Michael Wettengel, "Electronic Records: the European Scene." The result of a survey of activities on electronic records within the national archives in the European Union, 3 October, 1994.
2 In August/ September 1995, with the support of the University, I undertook my third conference/ study trip to North America since 1989. This expedition included the presentation of papers at the SAA Conference (a comment from my Australian perspective on the Society's Electronic Records Strategies Task Force Report), at the Annual Meeting of the ICA Provisional Section of Universities (Electronic Recordkeeping Strategies for the University Archivist), and at the National Archives of Canada (Continuing the Continuum), as well as participating in the research being undertaken by Luciana Duranti and Terry Eastwood at the University of British Columbia in conjunction with the US Department of Defense.
3 To explain the use of "oz" here apart from its obvious abbreviation for Australia and a somewhat appropriate connection to the "Wizard of...", "oz" was the abbreviated name given to the first Australia wide academic communication network which enabled many of us, in early 1990 in my own case, to obtain access to the internet - it has been replaced in recent years in the university sector by "edu" but some of us still retain the "oz" in our internet addresses.
4 Society of American Archivists. "Electronic Records Strategies Task Force Report". 2 May 1995.
5 Margaret Hedstrom. Electronic Records Strategies Task Force Report: What It Says and What It Means. Unpublished Conference paper delivered at Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 31 August 1995 )
6 By this I mean an archivist employed within an organisation, whose mission is not archival, to manage the corporate memory of that organisation.
7 Terry Cook, "It's 10 O'clock - Do You Know Where Your Data Are?", Technology Review. January 1995.
8 Rick Barry is a consultant in the field of information and records management. He will be a keynote speaker at the RMAA Convention in Canberra 9-11 September 1996 and will be conducting workshops on electronic records management in various cities in Australia during the remainder of September.
9 United Nations Advisory Committee for Coordination of Information Systems, "Electronic Records Management Guidelines: A Manual for Policy Development and Implementation". NY. United Nations. 1990.
10 Email RICKBARRY to G.Acland 14/5/96.
11 Email Hedstrom to G.Acland 6/4/96
12 Specifically and in some detail by both John McDonald and David Bearman.
13 Tony Poynton, "If the Pittsburgh Project is the Life Raft, Then I'm Taking Swimming Lessons", ASA Bulletin No. 126 April, 1996, pp. 23 - 27.
14 see endnote 6.
15 Email John McDonald to G.Acland various dates including 28/4/06.
16 For example, "Keeping Electronic Records: Policy for Electronic Recordkeeping In The Commonwealth Government", Exposure Draft Version 2, September 1995, "Using Electronic Mail", Australian Archives, February 1996, "Documenting The Future: Policy and Strategies for Electronic Recordkeeping in the New South Wales Public Sector", Archives Authority of New South Wales, July 1995, "Policy on Electronic Recordkeeping: Exposure Draft April 1996", The Archives Authority of New South Wales.
17 John McDonald, "ICA Committee on Electronic Records: Report". ICA Bulletin no.45, December 1995, pp.34-35. Email John McDonald to G.Acland 17/4/96.
18 The mandate of the ICA Committee on Electronic Records is "to undertake study and research, promote the exchange of experience and draft standards and directives concerning the creation and archival processing of electronic records."
19 Terry Cook, "Commentary on Papers by Wendy Duff and Luciana Duranti for Session 17, 'Protecting Evidence in Electronic Systems'," Association of Canadian Archivists Annual Conference, Regina, Saskatchewan, 17 June 1995.
20 Luciana Duranti and Terry Eastwood, "Protecting Electronic Evidence: A Progress Report on a Research Study and its Methodology". Archivi & Computer (3) 1995, pp. 213-250.
21 See Luciana Duranti, Heather MacNeil and William E. Underwood, "Protecting Electronic Evidence: A Second Progress Report on a Research Study and its Methodology", and Kenneth Thibodeau and Darryl R. Prescott, "Reengineering Records Management: The U.S. Department of Defense, Records Management Task Force." In publication in the forthcoming issue "Archivi & Computer".
22 "Archivi & Computer" is a refereed journal publishing up to date articles in English and French usually within 3 months of submission. Available from: Archivio Storico Comunale, Loggiati di San Domenico, 3-- 56027 San Miniato (PI)--Italy. +39/571-406233
23 URL: http://www.dtic.dla.mil:80/C3I/
24 Kenneth Thibodeau and Darryl R. Prescott, "Reengineering Records Management: The U.S. Department of Defense, Records Management Task Force." Forthcoming issue "Archivi & Computer".
25 URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc
26 University of Pittsburgh Electronic Records Project, Advisory Group of Experts Meeting, February 1-2, 1996. Source: URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc
27 University of Pittsburgh Electronic Records Project, Advisory Group of Experts Meeting, February 1-2, 1996. Source: URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc
28 University of Pittsburgh Electronic Records Project, Advisory Group of Experts Meeting, February 1-2, 1996. Source: URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc
29 University of Pittsburgh Electronic Records Project, Advisory Group of Experts Meeting, February 1-2, 1996. Source: URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc
30 The Vermont State Archives, located in the Office of the Secretary of State, has theoretical expertise in electronic records, but has no authority to issue regulations or guidelines. The Public Records Division, under the Governor's control, has the authority but has not exercised it. They view their role as simply the state's records warehouse. The State Archivist worked closely this summer with the House of Representatives to develop a Public Records bill to address some of our concerns. The Senate, however, removed most of the provisions. The State Archives did manage to get a few words added to the Public Records Law that acknowledges electronic records are public records. An attempt to create a unified records program with adequate authority failed to get out of committee (much of the language for this bill was based on Australian models). Source: Email Harold E. Thiele to G.Acland 9/5/96.
31 Email Harold E. Thiele to G.Acland 9/5/96.
32 Its goals were to determine what worked and what didn't in the context of a large University system, and what, if any, additions must be made to the models for functional requirements and for a metadata repository. Interestingly, this project emanates from a university archives which is part of the university libraries with the significant action being undertaken by a project "Data" Archivist whose primary objective involves record systems not data. As the report given to the February Pittsburgh Experts Meeting stresses "we are examining and evaluating records systems, not records themselves. From the beginning to end, this project is on evaluating the processes that create the record and the systems which maintain it."
33 http://www.indiana.edu/~libarche/
34 Clive Smith gave an account of the work being undertaken at The World Bank at the 1994 ASA Conference in Townsville. See C D Smith, Paper for Electronic Recordkeeping Session, in " Archives in the Tropics: Proceedings of the Australian Society of Archivists Conference, Townsville 9-11 May, 1994", Canberra. Australian Society of Archivists Inc., pp. 75-81. Consultant Rick Barry used the Pittsburgh Functional requirements to evaluate the archives and records management functionality of the electronic document management system proposed for the bank and used the opportunity to evaluate the products of the Pittsburgh project as well. He found the requirements very useful as an assessment tool for evaluating the electronic recordkeeping system when coupled with the use of the literary warrants specified for each system. Details of his activities are found at the Pitt web site as well as on his own web page (URL: http://www.rbarry.com). He will be a keynote speaker at the RMAA Convention in Canberra 9-11 September 1996 and will be conducting workshops on electronic records management in various cities in Australia during the remainder of September and presumably we will have the opportunity to hear more on this work when he is here later this year.
35 Wendy Duff. "The Influence of Literary Warrant on the Acceptance and Credibility of the Functional Requirements for Recordkeeping: A Dissertation Proposal", Dec. 15 1995. Source: URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc.
36 University of Pittsburgh Electronic Records Project, Advisory Group of Experts Meeting, February 1-2, 1996. Source: URL: http://www2.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc.
37 URL: http://http2.sils.umich.edu
38 Borrowed from Terry Cook, "Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The revolution in information management and archives in the post-custodial and post-modern era". Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 22, no.2, 1994.
39 John Ralston Saul, "The Unconscious Civilization". House of Anasi Press Ltd, Ontario, Canada. 1995. I thank John McDonald for drawing this book to my attention.
40 "The Unconscious Civilization". p.4.
41 "The Unconscious Civilization". p. 5.
42 Angelika Menne-Haritz, "Appraisal or Selection. Can a Content-oriented Appraisal be Harmonized with the Principle of Provenance", paper given at the first Stockholm Conference on Archival Theory and the Principle of Provenance (2-3 September, 1993), (Skrifter utgivna av Svenska Riksarkivet 10, Stockholm 1994.

© 1998 . All Rights Reserved. Licence: Limited to on-line viewing and the making of one (1) printout for off-line reading purposes only.

About     Research     Publications     Consulting     Links     Sitemap

Authorised by Head, School of Information Management and Systems. Caution.
Maintained by Records Continuum Research Group.

Last updated 5 January 2000.