The Pittsburgh Project Group and its Digital Archaeological Dig

The Pittsburgh Project Group

School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh

University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning

Background Information

The Pittsburgh Project Group: The Mission

The Pittsburgh Project aimed to create functional requirements for preserving digital documents and recordkeeping. Ironically, through a miscommunication, the website was lost and the contributors did not have back-up copies of their documentation. For the purpose of this project (as part of LIS 2674 Digital Preservation at Pitt in Spring 2008, taught by Dr. Bernadette Callery), we were assigned to look on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to try to recover the website documentation and reconstruct the dead links from the Pittsburgh Project website.

What was the Pittsburgh Project?

The Pittsburgh Project, also known as the Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping, was a project administered by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences between 1992 and 1996. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the project was a result of a conference on issues surrounding electronic records, co-sponsored by the NHPRC and the Minnesota Historical Society in 1991. Due to the growth of electronic records and subsequent challenges to traditional archives and records management standards, the conference produced a research agenda. In response, projects were undertaken at the University of British Columbia School of Library, Archival and Information Studies and at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Pittsburgh Project eventually produced a series of Standards for Business Acceptable Communications consisting of four main products: functional requirements, production rules, metadata specifications, and literary warrant. In addition, a selection of working papers and publications, progress reports, a bibliography, and a list of project participants were included in the Pittsburgh Project website.