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American Archivist (Vol. 64, No.2 / Fall-Winter 2001)
Abstracts and Author Bios
2001 Pease Award
Articles
Review Essays
Online Reviews
2001 Pease Award: Serving Up EAD: An Exploratory
Study on the Deployment and Utilization of Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
Finding Aids
James M. Roth
Abstract
This study explores the current methods for deploying EAD finding aids to
identify the most promising practices being used, examines how much and what
type of evaluation archivists are gathering from end-users regarding deployment
methods, identifies archivists' perceptions regarding the use of EAD-encoded
finding aids, and in general, attempts to further the study of electronic access
to archival collections. The focus of this paper is the current state of deployment
methods for EAD, including how long and what types of deployment methods are
being used, why they were selected, what changes, if any, are being planned,
and what types of challenges are associated with them. The paper also focuses
on archivists' perception of end-user utilization of EAD and explores the evaluation
upon which this perception is based, including how and on what basis archivists
formulate their perceptions.
Author Bio
James M. Roth is an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
in Boston. He received a master's degree from the School of Library and Information
Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Articles:
Principles, Methods and Instruments for the Creation, Preservation and Use
of Archival Records in the Digital Environment
Maria Guercio
Abstract
This essay begins with a consideration of traditional principles and concepts
and their validation in archival methodology and practice in order to present
analytic and reflective materials that will clarify the soundness of the instruments
developed up to now for the creation of records. It will then seek to confirm
their validity in the new technical realm and offer a fairly complete panorama
of the functions that need to be developed for the management of complete and
reliable records in the digital environment.
Understanding "Authenticity" in Records and Information Management:
Analyzing Practitioner Constructs
Eun Park
Author Bio
Eun Park is a doctoral student at the Department of Information Studies, University
of California, Los Angeles. She received her M.L.I.S. from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh.
Her research focuses on understanding the concept of authenticity in the management
of electronic records and electronic record-keeping systems. She has been working
for the InterPARES project as a research assistant on the U.S.-InterPARES research
team.
The Burlington Agenda: Research Issues in Intellectual Access to Electronically
Published Historical Documents
Elizabeth H. Dow, with David R. Chesnutt, William E. Underwood,
Helen R. Tibbo, Mary-Jo Kline, and Charlene N. Bickford
Abstract
As increasing numbers of primary historical documents appear on the World
Wide Web, publishers of those documents will need ways to provide intellectual
access to the contents. At a three-day meeting in Burlington, Vermont experts
in experimental electronic publishing, library and information science research,
documentary editing, and computer science research identified (1) the need
for user studies to determine the needs and reactions of the audience(s), (2)
the need to assess implications for change in publication management, and (3)
the need to compare empirically various technological approaches to access
to information as three areas of research which can contribute to our understanding
of how to construct and improve intellectual access to historical documents
on the Web.
Author Bio
Elizabeth Dow is a member of the faculty at the School of Library and Information
Science at Louisiana State University. She previously served on the faculty
of the University of Vermont and as Project Director of the "George Perkins
Marsh Online Research Center" project.
Doing the Best We Can?: The Use of Collection Development Policies
and Cooperative Collecting Activities at Manuscript Repositories
Cynthia Sauer
Abstract
Written collection development policies and cooperative collecting activities
are two tools that archivists are encouraged to use in the course of creating
and adding to their repositories' collections. Written collection development
policies are advocated as a way to ensure that collections have a coherent
and well-defined focus, while cooperative collecting practices are seen as
a way to ensure that related materials are not scattered among far-flung repositories
and that repositories' scarce resources are not needlessly squandered on unnecessary
competitiveness for collections. However, not only are there numerous impediments
to the effectiveness of either of these tools, many repositories do not use
them. A survey of manuscript repositories reveals some of the reasons why more
repositories do not engage in these practices, while quantitatively demonstrating
the benefits they offer to repositories that do.
Author Bio
Cynthia Sauer is an assistant editor for The Encyclopedia of New York State.
From 1998 to 2001 she worked as archivist and records manager for United University
Professions. She received an M.A. in history and an M.L.S. from the University
at Albany, State University of New York, in December 2000.
Experiments in Deaccessioning: Archives and Online Auctions
Michael Doylen
Abstract
All archives accumulate duplicate or out-of-scope materials. Archivists have
several options for removing such materials from their holdings: they may return
them to the donor, transfer them to a more appropriate repository, destroy,
or sell them. Although selling is the least practiced of these options, it
has advantages. Furthermore, the proliferation and popularity of online auction
venues make it possible for archives to sell items more quickly and at a greater
profit than before. This article discusses the legal and ethical issues raised
for archivists by the use of online auction venues in deaccessioning unwanted
materials.
Author Bio
Michael Doylen is an academic archivist at the Golda Meir Library, University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He holds an M.L.I.S with an archival concentration
from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Ph.D. in literature from the
University of California-Santa Cruz.
The Archivist as Educator: Integrating Critical Thinking
Skills into Historical Research Methods Instruction
Marcus C. Robyns
Author Bio
Marcus C. Robyns is the archivist at the Central Upper Peninsula and Northern
Michigan University Archives. He has worked as the municipal archivist for
the City of Portland, Oregon, and as an adjunct professor at Portland State
University. He is a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists, and Society
of American Archivists and serves on the board of directors of the Michigan
Archival Association.
Review Essays:
James M. O'Toole
Author Bio
James M. O'Toole is associate professor of history at Boston College. For
fifteen years, he directed the M.A. program in history and archival methods
at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. He is a Fellow of the Society of
American Archivists.
Richard J. Cox
Author Bio
Richard J. Cox is professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information
Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in library science and an M.A. in history. Dr. Cox
has written extensively in the area of archives. His most recent books are Closing
an Era: Historical Perspectives on Modern Archives and Records Management (2000),
and Managing Records as Evidence and Information 2001). He is a Fellow
of the Society of American Archivists.
Online Reviews:
Elisabeth Kaplan, Editor
The Biographer's Tale
by A. S. Byatt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001) 305 pp. $24. ISBN
0-375-41114-3.
Reviewed by Jennifer A. Marshall, School of Information
Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
A. S. Byatt, the British author and critic whose 1990 novel, Possession,
won the Booker Prize and captured the imaginations of readers worldwide, has
produced in The Biographer's Tale, another literary mystery constructed
around the attempted unraveling of primary source materials. As the work opens,
narrator and protagonist Phineas G. Nanson, a student of postmodern literary
theory, suddenly decides to abandon his studies. His resolution is sparked
by "an urgent need for a life full of things . . . full of facts" (p.
7). Professor Oremond Goode responds to this explanation by musing on the nature
of facts and their place in scholarship, speculating that "the art of
biography is a despised art because it is an art of things, of facts, of arranged
facts" (p. 7). He suggests that Nanson might find it interesting to read
Scholes Destry-Scholes's excellent but little known biography of Sir Elmer
Bole, a Victorian polymath, as he embarks on his new life.
Despite an initial skepticism of the merits of biography as a literary and
scholarly form, Nanson becomes engrossed in Destry-Scholes's biographical study
of Bole. As he examines and reexamines this monumental three-volume work, Nanson
finds himself increasingly intrigued by the biographer rather than his subject,
marveling at Destry-Scholes's masterful storytelling and arrangement of facts.
His admiration leads him to form the project of writing a biography of Destry-Scholes,
reasoning that "only a biography seemed an appropriate form for the great
biographer" (p. 26). With this decision begins Nanson's adventure into
the world of facts and things, a quest which soon leaves both Nanson and the
reader questioning the very nature of facts and their limits.
Nanson commences his research on Destry-Scholes enthusiastically enough, looking
up the biographer's birth and death records, writing to his publishers, and
advertising for pertinent information. His efforts to piece together the life
of Destry-Scholes are soon stymied, however, by scant primary source material.
The few documents he locates Ä notes for a lecture on the "Art of Biography," three
cryptic manuscripts which appear to be uncompleted biographical sketches, and
two shoeboxes full of index cards and photographs Ä are ambiguous and fragmentary.
Faced with this paucity of sources, Nanson laments that Destry-Scholes "was
very good at finding out other personages, but left no tracks of who he was" (p.
118).
During the course of his research, Nanson develops relationships with two
women. Fulla Biefield, a Swedish bee taxonomist, translates passages from primary
source materials that Nanson uncovers. Vera Alphage, a radiographer and, coincidentally,
the niece of Destry-Scholes, provides him with an odd assortment of her uncle's
possessions, including most significantly the aforementioned index cards and
photographs. Nanson is also diverted by accepting employment atô Puck's Girdle,
a quirky travel agency which specializes in designing unusual vacations. Ultimately,
the results of Nanson's research prove unsatisfactory, and what he had intended
as a biography of Destry-Scholes becomes, to his purported chagrin, an autobiographical
account of his ill-fated attemptô (and its subsequent abandonment) to document
the great biographer.
Of particular interest in The Biographer's Taleô Ä to archivists, researchers,
and general readers alike Ä is the interweaving of the primary source materials,
several of which (the lecture notes, the three manuscripts, and some of the
index cards and photographs) Byatt includes in Nanson's text. The manuscripts
(which he concludes are three separate, but somehow interconnected, biographical
sketches) play a pivotal role in the narrative. From beginning to end, however,
there is an aura of mystery about these documents. Indeed, their subjects,
whom Nanson identifies as historical figures Ä a taxonomist, a statistician,
and a dramatist Ä are referred to only by initials. Moreover, there is something
fantastical and surreal about the manuscripts, and Nanson's research suggests
that these accounts represent a complex web of truths, half-truths, and untruths.
The index cards, which Nanson spends a considerable amount of time attempting
to arrange into related clusters, seem to be the notes from which these accounts
were constructed, but shed little light on either the biographical accounts
or Destry-Scholes's purpose in writing them. Nanson is left to speculate about
Destry-Scholes's motives, wondering, "Was this a wry comment on the hopeless
nature of the project of biographical accuracy, or was it just a wild and whimsical
kicking-over of the traces?" (p. 273).
In the end, the mystery of Destry-Scholes and his manuscripts remains unresolved
and unsolved, and Nanson notes the conspicuous absence of his intended subject
from the narrative, conceding that he, "appeared to have failed to find
Destry-Scholes himself" (p. 248). Like Nanson's search for Destry-Scholes, The
Biographer's Tale itself has about it an air of incompleteness, refusing
to resolve itself neatly in the manner of Byatt's earlier literary mystery, Possession.
While initially frustrating, this lack of resolution appears to result more
from design than from accident. Had all the facts fallen into place neatly,
had all the loose ends been tidied up and tucked away, had all the mysteries
been solved, The Biographer's Tale might have been more satisfying to
readers' expectations, but it no doubt would have been a lesser work as a result.
It is the uncertainty and ambiguity of the novel that requires readers to reevaluate
the nature of facts and what they think they know about facts, to consider
the limits of primary source materials and of scholarship, and to wonder to
what extent it is ever possible to construct a definitive whole from fragmentary
parts. Perhaps these are some thoughts that archivists and users of archives,
with their faith in and respect for documents and primary source materials,
might do well to take away from The Biographer's Tale.
All the Names
by Jos Saramago
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Cost (New York: Harcourt, 1999)ô238
pp. ISBN 0-151004218.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Yakel, School of Information, University
of Michigan
All the Names, the recent novel by Nobel Laureate Jos Saramago, can
be added to the list of fictional works featuring archives and archivists.
This particular novel takes place in the Central Registry, an imposing edifice
with nameless clerks, that contains information on the births, marriages, and
deaths for a faceless citizenry. The protagonist, Senhor Jos, is a low-level
clerk who has long worked for the Central Registry. The novel begins just as
Senhor Jos commences an investigation that will lead him and the Central Registry
down a path that signals parallel changes in both Senhor Jos and in the Registry.
The linkage of Senhor Jos and the Central Registry is literal as well as metaphorical.
Senhor Jos lives in the last of several clerk's houses that were physically
attached to the Registry. The house features a door leading directly between
it and the Registry. When the novel begins, this door has not been used for
some time, but it is about to be opened.
The Central Registry acts as an instrument of both control and memory. The
ultimately irreconcilable tension between control and memory within the Registry
is a central theme of the novel. As a mechanism of control, Saramago presents
the institution as one that is both feared and revered among the populace.
Citizens are at once fearful and respectful of interactions with the office
and are anxious to assist in ensuring that the information is correct. The
Central Registry also embodies memory. It contains all the names. Two
large card indexes (catalogs) trace the journey from the catalog of the living
to the catalog of the dead. "The papers pertaining to those no longer
alive are to be found in a more or less organized state in the rear of the
building, the back wall of which, from time to time, had to be demolished and
rebuilt" (p. 3). At the beginning of the novel, though, the desire to
control outweighs the impetus for memory.
The Central Registry is also presented as an anonymous bureaucracy. As a bureaucracy,
it is slow to change and deliberate in actions. "The whole building had
the air of a ruin fixed in time" (p. 155). The work routines of the Central
Registry also bear the stamp of bureaucracy. Little change has occurred, and
the meaning of some routines has been lost. The Registrar explains, "I
am aware that times have changed, I am aware of society's need for a continuous
updating of working methods and processes, but I understand, as did those who
were in charge of the Central Registry before me, that the preservation of
the spirit, of the spirit of what I call continuity and organic identity, must
prevail over any other consideration, for if we fail to proceed along that
path, we will witness the collapse of the moral edifice which, as the first
and last depositories of life and death, we continue here to represent...there
will be those who consider us to be ridiculously frozen in time, who demand
of the government the rapid introduction into our work of advanced technologies,
but while it is true that laws and regulations can be altered and substituted
at any moment, the same cannot be said of traditions, which is, as such, both
in form and sense, immutable" (p. 173). The anonymity of the institution
is also notable. It is nameless in terms of the employees who are generally
referred to by title, e.g., the Registrar (no one is referred to by name except
Senhor Jos). This bureaucracy is also faceless because although it collects
information on people, what is really known about these citizens is incomplete
and lacks context. "In the Central Registry there were only words, in
the Central Registry you could not see how the faces had changed or continued
to change, when that was precisely what was most important, the thing that
time changes, not the name which never changes" (p. 91).
Yet traditions do change. It is by accident that Senhor Jos and the Central
Registry begin a journey moving from control to memory. Senhor Jos is a collector
of information about celebrities. He copies the vital statistics of these individuals
from their cards in the Registry, adds information clipped from newspapers
and magazines, and creates scrapbooks and context for these very public persons.
This hobby takes a turn when Senhor Jos enters the Central Registry through
the connecting door after hours and inadvertently pulls the card of an ordinary
woman along with the cards of celebrities. He becomes obsessed with finding
out about this woman: who she is, where she lives, and what kind of person
she has become. The book traces Senhor Jos as he attempts to recover the memory
of "the unknown woman" by understanding a context for her that includes
photographs, school records, and information from friends, parents, and colleagues.
In the midst of his search, the unknown woman commits suicide and Senhor Jos must
again enter the Central Registry in the night to recover her index card from
the catalog of the dead.
The novel focuses on the impossibility of really knowing another person and
if known, the difficulty of holding on to that memory. At one point, Senhor
Jos's search takes him to a cemetery. Once there, Senhor Jos discovers that
a shepherd who grazes his sheep in the cemetery also switches the numerical
tags that denote who is buried where, prior to the placement of headstones.
Senhor Jos muses, "Why, it's hard to explain, it's all to do with knowing
where the people we're looking for really are, he [the shepherd] thinks we'll
never know."ô But, in the end, Senhor Jos's quest to remember the unknown
woman is assisted by a surprising source. The Registrar has been monitoring
Senhor Jos's after-hours searching in the Central Registry. Together they
conspire to change the unknown woman's records by creating a new card without
a death date and refiling it in the catalog of the living. They come to the
conclusion that the only way to maintain the woman's memory and thus the true
tradition and spirit of the Central Registry (remembering and maintaining a
memory of all the names) is to falsify information and thus save the Central
Registry from the bureaucratic mentalit.
This falsification may offend some archivist-readers among us. But, Saramago
raises the issues of exactly what the ultimate mission of the archives is and
how this mission can best be achieved. In the process, he provides us with
a compelling story of a journey of discovery.
A Guide to the Archival Care of Architectural Records, 19th - 20th Centuries
by Maygene Daniels, Louis Cardinal, Robert Desaulniers, David
Peycer, Ccile Souchon and Andre Van Nieuwenhuysen (Paris: International
Council on Archives, 2000) viii, 150 pp. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations.
Available from the Society of American Archivists, $20 members, $26 nonmembers.
Blueprints to Bytes: Architectural Records in the Electronic Age
by the Massachusetts Committee for the Preservation of Architectural
Records (Boston: MassCOPAR, 2000) 37 pp. Available from the Society of American
Archivists, $14 members, $24 nonmembers.
Reviewed by Alan K. Lathrop, Manuscripts Division, University
Libraries, University of Minnesota
Once, not too many years ago, it was difficult for archivists to find any
guidelines on handling architectural records. Most archival institutions were
not paying any sort of attention to these important materials. They were viewed,
in fact, as mysterious, difficult, and awkward and therefore to be avoided,
if at all possible. Happily, that situation has dramatically changed. Many
libraries and archives have established collecting programs in architectural
records in the past decade and a half, bringing a corresponding increase in
the amount of cross-talk among archivists. The Architectural Records Roundtable
within the SAA, for example, has become an excellent source for the exchange
of ideas, problems, and solutions. At the same time, a number of manuals and
guides have appeared, providing archivists with guidance and advice in all
aspects of the management of architectural records. Some, including Toward
Standards for Architectural Archives (1984), Proceedings of the
Symposium on the Appraisal of Architectural Records (1985), and Documenting
Twentieth-Century Architecture: Problems and Issues (a special issue of
the American Archivist,1996), came out of conferences. Others, such
as the SAA's own Archives & Manuscripts: Maps and Architectural Drawings (1982),
Francoise Hildesheimer's The Processing of Architects' Records (1987),
Porter and Thorne's A Guide to the Description of Architectural Drawings (1994),
and Architectural Photoreproductions: a Manual for Identification and Care (1999)
by Kissel and Vigneau, were designed and written as self-help manuals.ôô The
result is that now an outstanding array of articles, manuals, and Web-based
information is available to assist archivists in dealing with architectural
records.
A Guide to the Archival Care of Architectural Records 19th and 20th Centuries is
a product of the Architectural Records Section of the International Council
on Archives. Its information is by no means new, but then the book has no such
pretenses. As its introduction is quick to point out, the guide "does
not claim to solve all the practical problems associated with the care of architectural
records."ô It is a practical, basic manual, aimed chiefly at archivists
in Europe and America who have relatively little experience with architectural
records. Archivists more experienced in the field will probably not find the
guide particularly helpful, and will gain from supplementing it with those
guides that offer a more detailed treatment of specific questions and issues.
Despite its title, the guide deals almost exclusively with records produced
in the twentieth-century. It consists of seven chapters, each written by a
different author and covering a specific topic. The first chapter defines the
various types of architectural records. It is followed by six chapters that
range through acquisition principles, appraisal, arrangement, description,
conservation, and access and dissemination (including research and exhibition).ôô The
manual was composed by English and French authors who write from their own
experience. This mix of European and American viewpoints produces occasional
awkwardness.ôFor example, the opening chapter on record types is written with
French architectural records in mind, and the terminology and techniques, especially
of printing, may, at times, be somewhat alien to U.S. archivists. In fact,
the authors, Andree Van Nieuwenhuysen and David Peycere, admit that "the
situation in the U.S. seems to be fairly different from that which can be observed
in France." Overall, however, the guide will serve well for most archival
situations in North America and Europe.
The most useful sections for American readers are those dealing with appraisal
(by Robert Desaulniers of the Canadian Centre for Architecture), arrangement
and description (by Maygene Daniels of the National Gallery of Art), and conservation
(by Louis Cardinal of the National Archives of Canada). Desaulniers not only
addresses the archival audience but also devotes three pages to the management
of records in architects' offices, a subject often missed in such guides. Daniels
presents a clear and comprehensible summary of how architectural collections
should be organized and offers helpful suggestions for the construction of
finding aids, using terminology familiar to American archivists. Cardinal's
chapter on conservation manages to pack a huge amount of information (including
a bibliography) into just twenty-seven pages.ôThese chapters deal efficiently
and effectively with issues that often perplex newcomers to the field, and
could well be disseminated as freestanding documents by themselves.
The guide's main weakness, and it is an important one, is the lack of adequate
attention to the problems presented by CAD-generated records.ôExcept for a
few brief references to the new technologies being employed to create construction
drawings, consideration of architectural records in electronic formats is ignored.
An entire chapter should have been devoted to this topic, especially at a time
when archivists are begging for answers to the problems inherent in preserving
electronic records. The ICA designed the manual to be regularly revised and
leaves the door open for a future edition that will include the study and discussion
of problems presented by the "increasing importance of computers."ô Nonetheless,
this omission serves to make the present guide less pertinent and, as a result
contributes to its more rapid obsolescence.
A helpful list of suggestions for further reading is to be found at the end
of the book and includes most of the important literature produced in the past
three decades. There is no index, the inclusion of which would certainly extend
the usefulness of the manual's otherwise excellent organization. Its 8½ - x ‰11-inch
format is convenient to handle and the spiral binding further contributes to
its practicality. The illustrations are well placed, although the small formats
of some of them result in a consequent loss of detail. Still, the guide is
a worthwhile contribution to the literature currently available concerning
architectural records, the care and preservation of which should no longer
be a cause for uncertainty among archivists.
In a sense, Blueprints to Bytes continues where A Guide to the Archival
Care of Architectural Records leaves off. Blueprints to Bytes comprises
the proceedings of a conference held by the Massachusetts Committee for the
Preservation of Architectural Records (MassCOPAR) at the Boston Architectural
Center on March 12, 1999. The proceedings are concerned with how CAD-generated
records are created and their future preservation. While not going into lavish
detail about specific steps that can be taken to ensure their preservation,
the book (actually, it is small enough to be called a "booklet")
does a good job of summarizing the problems inherent in the creation and
preservation of electronic records and offering some practical answers to
a critical issue.
The book is divided into three sections. The first is a talk delivered by
William J. Mitchell, professor of architecture and media arts and sciences
and dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. Mitchell's address
is entitled "New Digital Technologies in Architecture and their Implications
for Architectural Records."ôIt is a fascinating glimpse into the contemporary
world of digital technology as applied to the creation of architectural records,
stressing mainly three-dimensional CAD modeling. He points out the inevitable
and obvious problems Ä namely, that digital formats are constantly changing
and that, in order to preserve these kinds of records, the software, the operating
systems, and possibly the hardware have to be saved to read the data files.ôHe
offers no solutions, but instead leaves it to the archival profession to deal
with. Unfortunately for the reader, Mitchell's lecture was illustrated, and
the illustrations do not appear in the text. Thus when the reader finding references
to the slides being shown can only imagine what they look like. Not to have
at least some of them included for reference is frustrating, but one assumes
that publication cost was a major issue in the decision to omit them.ôôô
Tawny Ryan Nelb, the main speaker gave a lecture entitled, "Protecting
Your Investment: Will Your CAD Drawings Be There When You Need Them." This
is a look at the development of computer-assisted design from its earliest
beginnings to the present, and the preservation problems accompanying it. Part
of the thrust of Nelb's message is the lack of attention paid to the preservation
of electronic records by the architects themselves (not to mention their historic
disinterest in caring for their paper records), leaving much of this to the
archivists to try to resolve. She also correctly points out that CAD systems
were never meant to be archival tools; that most of the media ‰ including software Ä is
transitory in nature and highly susceptible to rapid obsolescence; and that
architects using CAD (and most are these days) develop everything from the
earliest concept schematics to the final construction drawings electronically,
often failing to save many of the steps in between in either electronic form
or hard copy.ôô And, of course, Web-based project management (WPM) (an exceedingly
handy tool for architects and contractors to instantaneously exchange information
regarding an on-going job), absolutely boggles the mind, as Ms. Nelb quite
graphically points out.ôBecause the data on a particular project is often in
partial form and in several offices, WPM makes it extremely difficult to bring
together and permanently retain such records as well as determine which parts
of a project came from which source.ôAfter surveying measures that archivists
can take to at least partially stem some of the rising tide of long-term preservation
problems, Nelb falls back on the tried-and-true conclusion: that the only proven
solution to the question is to produce a hard-copy record of every project.
The third and concluding section is a panel discussion by Katherine Meyer,
Brad Horst, Ted Dooling, and Ardys Kozbial. Meyer andô Horst work for Shepley,
Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott and took turns describing how that firm maintains
its paper records and its electronic files. Dooling of Boston Computer Scanning,
discussed his experience with tape and floppy backups and how most digital
files are now being saved on CD. Kozbial from Harvard's planning and real estate
office, related how her office maintains the drawings and related documents
for all of Harvard's buildings, and the successes and pitfalls of trying to
deal with CAD-generated records.ôô Each section is followed by a transcript
of the questions and answers from the audience and is helpful in elucidating
or expanding upon points discussed in the papers.
The book is useful, but must be used as an adjunct to other related publications.
It cannot and is not intended to be a stand-alone cure-all or how-to-do-it
manual; instead, it is a brief survey of the problems of CAD-generated records,
with suggestions for dealing with at least some of them, To that extent, the
book is useful for archivists grappling with architectural records in electronic
formats.
This reviewer would like to have heard someone at the conference recommend
that archivists should spend more at the firms, talking to architects and learning
firsthand how they create and preserve their records. Archivists would find
it revealing because, at least in the experience of this reviewer, architects,
in general, are finally becoming more sensitive to the value of their records
and are consequently spending more time and money to back up and migrate their
electronic files. A large number of firms have devoted a great deal of their
resources to the design and implementation of sophisticated systems for storing
and retrieving digital records. Most firms are making hard copies for permanent
reference. Archivists should therefore be happy to learn that architects evidently
have, one way or another, finally gotten the message. Small comfort as it is,
this may make it a bit easier to sleep at night.
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