The records continuum is becoming a much used term, but has seldom been defined in ways which show it is a time/space model not a life of the records model. Dictionary definitions of a continuum describe such features as its continuity, the indescernibility of its parts, and the way its elements pass into each other. Precise definitions, accordingly, have to discern the indiscernible, identify points that are not distinct, and do so in ways which accomodate the continuity of change. This article, and a second part to be published in the next volume, will explore the continuum in time/space terms supported by a theoretical mix of archival science, postmodernity and the 'structuration theory' of Anthony Giddens. In this part the main objectives are to give greater conceptual firmness to the continuum; to clear the way for broader considerations of the nature of the continuum by freeing archivists from the need to debate custody; to show how the structural principles for archival practice are capable of different expression without losing contact with something deeper that can outlive the manner of expression.
Critical Arguements
CA "This is the first instalment of a two part article exploring the records continuum. Together the articles will build into a theory about the constitution of the virtual archives. In this part I will examine what it can mean to be 'postcustodial', outline some possible structural principles for the virtual archives, and present a logical model for the records continuum." ... "In what follows in the remainder of this article (and all of the next) , I will explore the relevance of [Anthony] Giddens' theory to the structuring of the records continuum."
Phrases
<P1> If the archival profession is to avoid a fracture along the lines of paper and electronic media, it has to be able to develop ways of expressing its ideas in models of relevance to all ages of recordkeeping, but do so in ways which are contemporaneous with our own society. <warrant> <P2> We need more of the type of construct provided by the Pittsburgh Project's functional requirements for evidence which are 'high modern' but can apply to recordkeeping over time. <P3> What is essential is for electronic records to be identified, controlled and accessible for as long as they have value to Government and the Community. <warrant> <P4> We have to face up to the complexification of ownership, possession, guardianship and control within our legal system. Even possession can be broken down into into physical possession and constructed possession. We also have to face the potential within our technology for ownership, possession, custody or control to be exercised jointly by the archives, the organisation creating the records, and auditing agencies. The complexity requires a new look at our way of allocating authorities and responsibilities. <P5> In what has come to be known as the continuum approach Maclean argued that archivists should base their profession upon studies of the characteristics of recorded information, recordkeeping systems, and classification (the way the records were ordered within recordkeeping systems and the way these were ordered through time). <P6> A significant role for today's archival institution is to help to identify and establish functional requirements for recordkeeping that enable a more systematic approach to authentication than that provided by physical custody. <warrant> <P7> In an electronic work environment it means, in part, that the objectivity, understandability, availability, and usability of records need to be inherent in the way that the record is captured. In turn the documents need to be captured in the context of the actions of which they are part, and are recursively involved. <warrant> <P8>A dimensional analysis can be constructed from the model and explained in a number of ways including a recordkeeping system reading. When the co-ordinates of the continuum model are connected, the different dimensions of a recordkeeping system are revealed. The dimensions are not boundaries, the co-ordinates are not invariably present, and things may happen simultaneously across dimensions, but no matter how a recordkeeping system is set up it can be analysed in terms such as: first dimensional analysis: a pre- communication system for document creation within electronic systems [creating the trace]; second dimensional analysis: a post- communication system, for example traditional registry functionality which includes registration, the value adding of data for linking documents and disseminating them, and the maintenance of the record including disposition data [capturing trace as record]; third dimensional analysis: a system involving building, recalling and disseminating corporate memory [organising the record as memory]; fourth dimensional analysis: a system for building, recalling and disseminating collective memory (social, cultural or historical) including information of the type required for an archival information system [pluralizing the memory]. <P9> In the high modern recordkeeping environment of the 1990's a continuum has to take into account a different array of recordkeeping tools. These tools, plucking a few out at random but ordering the list dimensionally, include: document management software, Australian records system software, the intranet and the internet. <P10> In terms of a records continuum which supports an evidence based recordkeeping approach, the second dimension is crucial. This is where the document is disembedded from the immediate contexts of the first dimension. It is this disembedding process that gives the record its value as a 'symbolic token'. A document is embedded in an act, but the document as a record needs to be validatable using external reference points. These points include the operation of the recordkeeping system into which it was received, and information pertaining to the technical, social (including business) and communication processes of which the document was part.
Conclusions
RQ "Postcustodial approaches to archives and records cannot be understood if they are treated as a dualism. They are not the opposite of custody. They are a response to opportunities for asserting the role of an archives - and not just its authentication role - in many re-invigorating ways, a theme which I will explore further in the next edition of Archives and Manuscripts."
SOW
DC "Frank Upward is a senior lecturer in the Department of Librarianship, Archives and Records at Monash University. He is an historian of the ideas contained in the Australian records continuum approach, and an ex-practitioner within that approach."
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.
