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Current Stories, 2000
Please Participate in ERS Membership Survey
At our annual section meeting last August, members of the Electronic
Records Section discussed the need for a membership directory and
specialty contact list. In response, we created the following membership
survey. Once completed, an on-line directory will be publicly
available on the ERS website. Please take a few moments to fill out the
survey and share your interests and expertise with your colleagues. The
survey consists of four sections--Contact Information, Areas of
Specialization, Areas of Interest, and Professional Membership.
New Online Discussion Group
The SAA Electronic Records section has a new unmoderated online
discussion group through Yahoo! Groups (formerly eGroups). This forum,
suggested during the section meeting in Denver, is for the discussion of
current electronic records topics and issues of concern to archivists and
records managers. It will also help facilitate communication between ER
section members working on task forces and committees.
To subscribe to the list, send a blank email (no subject line and no
body text) to:
SAA-ERS-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
You will receive a subscription confirmation message. Simply reply to this
message to complete your subscription. You will then receive a welcome
message with information on how to post messages and how to unsubscribe
from the list. As part of keeping the group service free, Yahoo! inserts
ads at the bottom of each message. List members can either follow the
links or ignore them as they so choose.
While the group is unmoderated, you must be a member of the group in
order to post or read messages. Membership is not limited to members of
SAA so please encourage others who are interested in electronic
recordkeeping to join the group as well. All messages are archived and
can be accessed by members through the website's URL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SAA-ERS
To access the group site, you will need a Yahoo! ID and password.
Visit the Yahoo! Groups main page (http://groups.yahoo.com) for more
information on obtaining an ID. This ID is only for logging into the
website. All messages go to the email you specified when you subscribed.
At this time, attachments to postings will automatically be discarded in
order to control for viruses. If you have a file that you would like to
have posted to the group, please send it to one of the moderators who will
post it to the group's file section.
There are some great features beyond posting messages that we
hope to utilize
in the future. Some of these features include sections to store
links
and files, polling, and a chat room. We will provide more details
on these
features to group members as we begin to use them. If you have any
questions
or problems subscribing to the group, please contact Rosemary
Pleva Flynn
at rapleva@indiana.edu.
Indiana University Electronic Records Project,
Phase II
The Indiana University Archives began the second phase of its
Electronic Records Project in February 2000 with a two-year continuation
grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission
(NHPRC). Philip Bantin, University Archivist, is the director of the
current project, and Rosemary Pleva Flynn was hired as the Electronic
Records Project Archivist. The Indiana University Electronic Records
Project is primarily an implementation project designed to develop a
strategy and methodology for incorporating recordkeeping requirements into
IU¬s transaction processing and information systems. Questions being asked
by project staff include: Will traditional methods for identifying,
appraising, describing records still have value in managing electronic
records, or will we have to significantly change the way we do business?
What new skills will be needed? What changes need to be made to
transaction process systems to make them function effectively as
recordkeeping systems? How does one insert the archives program into the
process for designing, analyzing, and auditing electronic information
systems on the IU campus? Who are an archivist¬s strongest allies in the
management of electronic records, and which issues will resonate with
these partners?
One of the exciting projects underway is the creation of MyIU, a
web-based portal that will provide a unified front end to IU¬s
traditional transaction processing systems as well as the PeopleSoft human
resources management and student information modules that are currently
being implemented. Project personnel have been working closely with the
MyIU team as they gathered requirements to ensure that the recordkeeping
requirements necessary to capture and manage reliable and authentic
records are included in the system design. The portal¬s infrastructure,
known as EDEN (Enterprise Development Environment), will include a
workflow engine that will be used to handle the routing and approval of
electronic documents created by these information systems. Project
personnel believe that this workflow engine can be utilized to capture
documents that have been determined to have record status and transfer
them to a recordkeeping environment where they can be managed.
In addition to work on the MyIU/EDEN portal, during the first six
months
of the project the staff have been actively involved in three
other projects.
They have teamed with IU¬s Internal Audit Department to conduct
audits
of automated systems in several administrative units of the
University.
In these audits, the primary goal and contribution of the Archives
staff
has been to review the systems in terms of their ability to
capture, manage
and preserve records. The project staff have also been actively
involved
in the identification, review and selection of enterprise-wide
document
management software. Again, the major contributions of project
staff have
been to ensure that recordkeeping requirements were included in
the RFP,
and that vendors bidding on the project met these recordkeeping
specifications.
Finally, they have been generating policies and requirements
statements
related to the management of records and other digital objects. To
date,
the staff have created a draft e-mail policy, a draft imaging
policy,
and revised lists of recordkeeping requirements and of metadata
specifications.
For more information about the project, please see the project¬s
new website
at http://www.indiana.edu/~libarch/ER,
or send email to Philip Bantin, the project director, at bantin@indiana.edu,
or Rosemary Pleva Flynn, the project archivist, at rapleva@indiana.edu.
Michigan's Records Management Application
The State of Michigan has initiated a pilot project to test a Records
Management Application. The challenge of managing electronic records
prompted the Records and Forms Management Division, of the Department of
Management and Budget, and the State Archives of Michigan, of the
Department of State to collaborate on a pilot project Records Management
Application Project, that is funded by a National Historical Publications
and Records Commission Grant (NHPRC). The RMA pilot project began May 1,
2000 and will continue for two years.
The software chosen for the project is Provenance's ForeMost
Enterprise. This Records Management Application will be tested at two
sites within the Department of Management and Budget. In the initial year
of the project, the Office of Support Services will use the RMA to
classify and manage their electronic records. This phase of the project
will focus on the end users experience classifying and storing records.
Also the software will be evaluated for its effectiveness in applying
retention schedules. The Director's office will be added to the project
in the second year. The project will also focus on the RMA's ability to
identify and segregate archival records in the second year.
Please visit their website at www.state.mi.us/dmb/oss/rfmd/rma/index.htm
for all the latest news on this project.
Report from ECURE 2000
Record keeping systems are becoming more sophisticated, and records are
becoming more complex. Yet, at the same time, changes in technology are
causing college administrators, archivists and records managers to take a
new look at fundamental issues. This idea was one connecting thread
running through the recent ECURE 2000 Conference on Preservation and
Access for Electronic University and College Records. Indeed, several
conference presenters encouraged their listeners to rethink the most basic
question, "What is a record?"
The annual conference is sponsored by Arizona State University, and was
held October 5 and 6, 2000. It opened with keynote speaker Clifford A.
Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information,
describing the blizzard of new data
descending on archivists. Soon, video recording of classroom lectures may
be as easy as turning on a wall switch, Lynch said. Already available are
dynamic Web sites, online course catalogs and “smart” buildings capable of
recording telemetry data about the movements of their occupants. As a
result, old categories are being shattered, and static definitions are
becoming fluid. Administrators will need to begin to think of records
management in institution-wide terms. Record creation and record keeping.
will need to be considered together, rather than separately, in this
dialogue.
Though Y2K is behind us, computer system architecture will continue to
be of concern. In many ways, the discussion about records management
issues will be nearly indistinguishable from the discussion about what the
networked computing environment will be Lynch said. In addition,
"it is high time for really serious dialogue with the producers of
those systems about what our requirements are (regarding storage and
obsolescence)," he said. A recording of Dr. Lynch¬s presentation will
be videostreamed through the ECURE website at a later date.
John T. Phillips of Information Technology Decisions, noted that
documents themselves now contain an assortment of information objects
embedded in them, and are becoming "virtual records." The
development of extranets between institutions means that a record may have
multiple contributors located on different computing systems.
Wendy Duff, Assistant Professor with the University of Toronto Faculty
of Information Studies, provided “An Introduction to Metadata.” She
examined the historical perspective and examples such as MEX2, Dublin
Core, Resource Description Framework, XML (extensible markup language),
and other emerging standards and structures.
To address organizational change, Phillip C. Bantin, Indiana University
Archivist and Project Director, gave an update on the Indiana University
Electronic Recordkeeping Project. Bantin described a management model that
includes an Information/Records Management Office, and steering committees
made of senior officials and data stewards. To be effective, records
managers and archivists will need to acquire skills in information systems
analysis and design, Bantin said. They will need the ability to create
conceptual models for representing records and system requirements. He
recommended that records professionals increase their understanding of
metadata systems, such as data dictionaries, information resource
dictionary systems, and transaction logs. They can become more familiar
with how automated systems process data. Bantin gave as examples
Transaction Processing Systems (TPS), Database Management Systems (DBMS),
Management Information Systems (MIS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
software, Decision Support Systems (DSS), Data Warehouses, and Electronic
Document Management Systems (EDMS).
Though academic institutions produce records similar to those used in
industry, they also produce many kinds of records with special
characteristics. Jeremy Rowe, Head of Media Development for Arizona State
University, and Nancy Tribbensee, Deputy General Counsel of the Office of
General Counsel at Arizona State, discussed electronically enhanced
courses.
Knowing "what not to do" when planning these courses is often
the most important planning skill, they said. Technical problems can
involve standard technology issues, such as security, privacy, software
standards, file organization, disaster recovery, and back-up.
However, there are also issues which are specific to course
development. These include licensing vs. ownership, permissions, course
management, copyrights, and instructional design. Accommodations must also
be made for existing institutional policies, like grade books, course
records, and the replicability of materials for grievances and
appeals.
Among the other conference presentations were discussions of how
existing laws such as FERPA (Family Educational Records Policies Act) and
FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) apply to digital records and e-mail.
Online portal sites, and creating computer use policies, were also
examined.
The conference website at http://www.asu.edu/it/events/ecure/
is being updated with presentation slides and outlines. Plans are
underway for hosting ECURE 2001 next fall, according to conference
co-chair Rob Spindler. "We believe ECURE is helping to increase
recognition that effective recordkeeping is essential, and that many
professions bring necessary skills to the system design table,"
Spindler said.
Page last updated: 2002-11-19
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