NARA's Electronic Records
http://www.archives.gov
/electronic_records_archives
/index.html
The most daunting challenge facing archivists today is how to adequately
care for, preserve, and provide access to electronic records. The technological solutions we
have at hand today (migration, saving in stable formats, etc.) all have obvious problems
associated with them and all may become obsolete as electronic documents and formats become
more complex over time. The solution of all too many archivists has been to ignore the problem:
to assume that sufficient documentation will survive in paper form and to avoid the troubling
problems associated with electronic records.
But the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has, to its credit,
launched a large, multi-year, multi-pronged project to study the issue of what a true electronic
records archives (ERA) would be and to design a long-term solution to the preservation of
electronic records. NARA’s focus, as it should be, is currently on designing a digital archives
that will preserve archival electronic records of the federal government for as long as they’re
needed.
NARA’s current design activities for the ERA involve computer science, engineering,
and archival theory and focus on elaborating the archival business model for a proposed ERA system
articulating the necessary information management architecture determining what the specific system
components will be.
NARA is working on this research with a number of partners and held four “user
dialog sessions” across the country in February to get more information from possible users of
the system. Although NARA is satisfied that a successful ERA can be built, much work remains
before the ERA will be a reality. This is important research, and anyone interested in the
management of archival electronic records should pay close attention to where this might
lead our profession.
Submitted by Geof Huth, ERS Chair
