CA One struggle facing us is to convince the rest of society that the ÔÇ£information superhighwayÔÇØ is very much about records, evidence and ÔÇ£recordnessÔÇØ.
Phrases
<P1> It has been argued that existing computer software applications harm recordkeeping because they are remiss in capturing the full breadth of contextual information required to document transactions and create records -- records which can serve as reliable evidence of the transactions which created them. In place of records, these systems are producing data which fails to relate the who, what, when, where, and why of human communications -- attributes which are required for record evidence. This argument has found both saliency and support in other work conducted by the Netherlands and the World Bank, which have both noted that existing software applications fail to provide for the capture of the required complement of descriptive attributes required for proper recordkeeping. These examples point to the vast opportunity presented to archivists to position themselves as substantive contributors to information infrastructure discussions. Archivists are capable of pointing out what will be necessary to create records in the electronic environment which, in the words of David Bearman, meet the requirements of ÔÇ£business acceptable commincation. (p.87) <warrant>
Conclusions
RQ Can archivists provide access to information in the unstable electronic records environment we find ourselves in today?
Type
Journal
Title
Managing the Present: Metadata as Archival Description
Traditional archival description undertaken at the terminal stages of the life cycle has had two deleterious effects on the archival profession. First, it has resulted in enormous, and in some cases, insurmountable processing backlogs. Second, it has limited our ability to capture crucial contextual and structural information throughout the life cycle of record-keeping systems that are essential for fully understanding the fonds in our institutions. This shortcoming has resulted in an inadequate knowledge base for appraisal and access provision. Such complications will only become more magnified as distributed computering and complex software applications continue to expand throughout organizations. A metadata strategy for archival description will help mitigate these problems and enhance the organizational profile of archivists who will come to be seen as valuable organizational knowledge and accountability managers.
Critical Arguements
CA "This essay affirms this call for evaluation and asserts that the archival profession must embrace a metadata systems approach to archival description and management." ... "It is held here that the requirements for records capture and description are the requirements for metadata."
Phrases
<P1> New archival organizational structures must be created to ensure that records can be maintained in a usable form. <warrant> <P2> The recent report of Society of American Archivists (SAA) Committee on Automated Records and Techniques (CART) on curriculum development has argued that archivists need to "understand the nature and utility of metadata and how to interpret and use metadata for archival purposes." <warrant> <P3> The report advises archivists to acquire knowledge on the meanings of metadata, its structures, standards, and uses for the management of electronic records. Interestingly, the requirements for archival description immediately follow this section and note that archivists need to isolate the descriptive requirements, standards, documentiation, and practices needed for managing electronic records. <warrant> <P4> Clearly, archivists need to identify what types of metadata will best suit their descriptive needs, underscoring the need for the profession to develop strategies aand tactics to satisfy these requirements within active software environments. <warrant> <P5> Underlying the metadata systems strategy for describing and managing electronic information technologies is the seemingly universal agreement amongst electronic records archivists on the requirement to intervene earlier in the life cycle of electronic information systems. <warrant> <P6> Metadata has loomed over the archival management of electronic records for over five years now and is increasingly being promised as a basic control strategy for managing these records. <warrant> <P7> However, she [Margaret Hedstrom] also warns that as descriptive practices shift from creating descriptive information to capturing description along with the records, archivists may discover that managing the metadata is a much greater challenge than managing the records themselves. <P8> Archivists must seek to influence the creation of record-keeping systems within organizations by connecting the transaction that created the data to the data itself. Such a connection will link informational content, structure, and the context of transactions. Only when these conditions are met will we have records and an appropriate infrastructure for archival description. <warrant> <P9> Charles Dollar has argued that archivists increasingly will have to rely upon and shape the metadata associated with electronic records in order to fully capture provenance information about them. <warrant> <P10> Bearman proposes a metadata systems strategy, which would focus more explicitly on the context out of which records arise, as opposed to concentrating on their content. This axiom is premised on the assumption that "lifecycle records systems control should drive provenance-based description and link to top-down definitions of holdings." <warrant> <P11> Bearman and Margaret Hedstrom have built upon this model and contend that properly specified metadata capture could fully describe sytems while they are still active and eliminate the need for post-hoc description. The fundamental change wrought in this approach is the shift from doing things to records (surveying, scheduling, appraising, disposing/accessioning, describing, preserving, and accessing) to providing policy direction for adequate documentation through management of organizational behavior (analyzing organizational functions, defining business transactions, defining record metadata, indentifying control tactics, and establishing the record-keeping regime). Within this model archivists focus on steering how records will be captured (and that they will be captured) and how they will be managed and described within record-keeping systems while they are still actively serving their parent organization. <P12> Through the provision of policy guidance and oversight, organizational record-keeping is managed in order to ensure that the "documentation of organizational missions, functions, and responsibilities ... and reporting relationships within the organization, will be undertaken by the organizations themselves in their administrative control systems." <warrant> <P13> Through a metadata systems approach, archivists can realign themselves strategically as managers of authoritative information about organizational record-keeping systems, providing for the capture of information about each system, its contextual attributes, its users, its hardware configurations, its software configurations, and its data configurations. <warrant> <P14> The University of Pittsburgh's functional requirements for record-keeping provides a framework for such information management structure. These functional requirements are appropriately viewed as an absolute ideal, requiring testing within live systems and organizations. If properly implemented, however, they can provide a concrete model for metadata capture that can automatically supply many of the types of descriptive information both desired by archivists and required for elucidating the context out of which records arise. <P15> It is possible that satisfying these requirements will contribute to the development of a robust archival description process integrating "preservation of meaning, exercise of control, and provision of access'" within "one prinicipal, multipurpose descriptive instrument" hinted at by Luciana Duranti as a possible outcome of the electronic era. <P16> However, since electronic records are logical and not physical entities, there is no physical effort required to access and process them, just mental modelling. <P17> Depending on the type of metadata that is built into and linked to electronic information systems, it is possible that users can identify individual records at the lowest level of granularity and still see the top-level process it is related to. Furthermore, records can be reaggregated based upon user-defined criteria though metadata links that track every instance of their use, their relations to other records, and the actions that led to their creation. <P18> A metadata strategy for archival description will help to mitigate these problems and enhance the organizational profile of archivists, who will come to be seen as valuable organizational knowledge and accountability managers. <warrant>
Conclusions
RQ "First and foremost, the promise of metadata for archival description is contingent upon the creation of electronic record-keeping systems as opposed to a continuation of the data management orientation that seems to dominate most computer applications within organizations." ... "As with so many other aspects of the archival endeavour, these requirements and the larger metadata model for description that they are premised upon necessitate further exploration through basic research."
SOW
DC "In addition to New York State, recognition of the failure of existing software applications to capture a full compliment of metadata required for record-keeping and the need for such records management control has also been acknowledged in Canada, the Netherlands, and the World Bank." ... "In conjunction with experts in electronic records managment, an ongoing research project at the University of Pittsburgh has developed a set of thirteen functional requirements for record-keeping. These requirements provide a concrete metadata tool sought by archivists for managing and describing electronic records and electronic record-keeping systems." ... David A. Wallace is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan, where he teaches in the areas of archives and records management. He holds a B.A. from Binghamton University, a Masters of Library Science from the University at Albany, and a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh. Between 1988 and 1992, he served as Records/Systems/Database Manager at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., a non-profit research library of declassified U.S. government records. While at the NSA he also served as Technical Editor to their "The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy" series. From 1993-1994, he served as a research assistant to the University of Pittsburgh's project on Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping, and as a Contributing Editor to Archives and Museum Informatics: Cultural Heritage Informatics Quarterly. From 1994 to 1996, he served as a staff member to the U.S. Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure. In 1997, he completed a dissertation analyzing the White House email "PROFS" case. Since arriving at the School of Information in late 1997, he has served as Co-PI on an NHPRC funded grant assessing strategies for preserving electronic records of collaborative processes, as PI on an NSF Digital Government Program funded planning grant investigating the incorporation of born digital records into a FOIA processing system, co-edited Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (Quorum, 2002), and was awarded ARMA International's Britt Literary Award for an article on email policy. He also serves as a consultant to the South African History Archives Freedom of Information Program and is exploring the development of a massive digital library of declassified imaged/digitized U.S. government documents charting U.S. foreign policy.
