Current Professional
Information Sources. Archivists and records managers have mostly
used the World Wide Web as a means of distributing current information about
professional activities and resources for practical work. This meshes well with the intended purposes
of the Web, and the Web has certainly supported a transformation in the ways
that records professionals seek information about current approaches to all
dimensions of records work.
Professional associations, consultants, vendors, and individuals with an
interest in conveying information to their colleagues have made contributions
to records work by their use of the World Wide Web. Walt Crawford, better known in the library world as both a
futurist and technologist, describes the value of these most mundane uses of
the Web when he writes that “The future that I regard as most probable and most
desirable grows out of the present, becoming more complex rather than less. In
that future, the Web will serve libraries and archives in a multiplicity of ways-not
as a replacement for buildings, physical circulating collections, and carefully
conserved archives, but as a set of tools to improve current services, provide
new services, and gain access to resources beyond local collections”
(Crawford). Here is where we most
readily see the Web at work in the records professions, with records managers
and archivists communicating generally to each other.
Some
individuals have developed general
clearinghouses of information intended to aid their colleagues, and these
sites make important references, albeit with some limitations. Two examples of individual initiatives can
suffice to demonstrate both the potential and problems of the Web’s assets for
archives and records management. Leon Miller, Manuscripts Librarian at Tulane
University, created and maintains “Ready, ‘Net, Go: Archival Internet
Resources,” available at http://www.tulane.edu/~lmiller/ArchivesResources.html,
described as an “archival ‘meta index,’ or index of archival indexes. That is,
from here we refer you to the major indexes, lists, and databases of archival
resources. From them you can link to almost every archives and archival
resource in the metaverse.” There is a
group of “broad, general categories,” including master lists of archives,
archival tools, archival search engines, professional resources, and searching
resources. “These categories correspond to the discussion of Internet archival
resources in the Society of American Archivists
workshop Cyberspace for Archivists.” The usefulness of this site, in fact is a
model, is that it provides critical and/or descriptive comments about various
sites. For example, under professional
resources is a description of the National Coordinating Committee for the
Promotion of History: “Through this site archivists can keep up with political
and governmental affairs in the United States as they pertain to archives and
history. Since 1982, NCC has served as a national advocacy office for the
historical and archival professions. This web site, sponsored by H-Net:
Humanities Online, provides access to NCC legislative and policy issues briefs
and back issues of NCC Washington Updates.” Users of the Web have a sense of the resource before clicking onto it, saving
substantial time in both Web browsing and searching. Records professionals, looking for time critical information in
order to solve a problem, will be happy to have such descriptions to aid them.
At the other end of the spectrum of
usefulness is Alan S. Zaben’s “Records and Information Management Resource
List: Links to Records and Information Management (RIM) and Other Related
Websites,” available at http://home.flash.net/~survivor/websites.htm. This resource provides over three thousand
links in 238 categories, by its own accounting, but there is no descriptive
information accompanying the links or even any explanation indicating how the
categories have been developed. Many of
the categories are simply assumed to be understood by the person viewing the
site, such as “backups,” while are others are more cryptic. With a click on “books” you find a book
title (that is, if you knew it was a
book title) and the click on the title you are linked to is an Amazon.com
description of Michael J. D. Sutton’s Document Management for the Enterprise: Principles,
Techniques, and Applications, hardly very useful especially if you are unaware of other books on records and document
management. Why is this book selected?
Are there other useful
references on this topic? Why is there
not a link to Rick Barry’s review of this book, originally published in the Journal
of the American Society for Information Science, 49 (January 1998) and specifically targeted at records managers,
available at http://www.rbarry.com/JASIS4.html?
That just listing this book without
commentary is so strange can be discerned in Barry’s review: “Although one of
its greatest strengths is its well crafted integration of records management
considerations into the broader EDMS fabric, CIOs should not assume that the
ARM professionals in their own organizations will agree with everything the
book has to say about recordkeeping. That should not be a put-off however as
there are both legitimate professional differences of opinion and differences
in organizational needs with some of these topics. Moreover, it will be
difficult to find other document management texts that seriously address these
subjects at all.” The Zaben link is an
idiosyncratic Web reference, providing an equal amount of useful information and frustration.
Not surprisingly, consultants have
provided Web sites, part of the value in the Web in self-advertising. Barry Associates (Rick Barry), available at http://www.rbarry.com/, advertises itself as
working in information management and electronic records management
“interdisciplinary consulting.” Like a
number of experienced consultants, Barry’s Web site includes a variety of
valuable resource materials such as online publications, copies of print
publications, conference presentations, and similar materials. Barry’s Web site also includes papers by
others, such as David Wallace’s 1998 Society of American Archivists
presentation, “Recordkeeping and Electronic Mail Policy: The State of Thought
and the State of the Practice.” There are other examples of consultants’ web
sites making important contributions to the records professions. Gregory Hunter, an Associate Professor at
the Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University,
since 1990 and specializing in archives and records management maintains a Web
site, http://www.hunterinformation.com/professi.htm,
for his consulting work. Besides the
usual information regarding his consulting, Hunter includes resources such as
the “fifth edition of the Directory of
Corporate Archives in the United States and Canada, published by the
Society of American Archivists' Business Archives Section. This edition
includes companies that maintain their historical records themselves, as well
as companies that contract with historical consulting firms to maintain their
archives collections for them. Those businesses that contract outside the
company for archival services are marked by an asterisk. This edition also
includes the archives of professional associations, as these collections
document various industries and companies that may be of use to corporate
archivists.” David Bearman and Jennifer
Trant, operating Archives & Museum
Informatics (http://www.archimuse.com/), have long provided services to both the archives
and museum professions with conferences, workshops and
seminars, journals and monographs, and consulting. Their Web site is especially valuable as it contains links to
many online articles and reports. For
the records professional, particular attention should be paid to two lengthy
and ground-breaking publications by David Bearman – Archival Methods, Archives and Museum
Informatics Technical Report #9 (Pittsburgh, Archives and Museum Informatics,
1989), available at http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/archival_methods
and "Archival Strategies," American
Archivist, vol. 58, p.374-407, available at http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/archival_strategies/. These two writings pose many seminal
questions about the work of the archival profession.
Finally, in
the category of general professional resources, the World Wide Web offers an
amazing ability to discover information about vendors offering services in
archives and records management. Since
there are so many vendors with considerable information on the Web, I will only
discuss one example, but a particularly important one for records
professionals. Doculabs (http://www.doculabs.com/) is an “independent industry analyst firm
specializing in e-business technologies,” “guided by the principle that both
end-users and vendors benefit from impartial feedback about product strengths
and limitations to make both strategic and tactical business decisions.” It
claims to be “one of the first industry analyst firms to ground its research,
end-user and vendor advisory services in unbiased, reality-based product
assessment results,” using “benchmark methodology, combined with trend and
market analysis, to help clients make the right technology investment decisions
and to help vendors attack new market opportunities.” “The company specializes in emerging technology solutions,
including e-commerce, customer relationship management, content and knowledge
management, fulfillment and e-billing, and e-business infrastructures.” The Doculabs Web site includes a lot of
articles and other online full-text materials that will assist records
professionals and draws on the knowledge gained by Doculabs staff, such as
“Doculabs challenges six myths of KM” (http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=627&Publication_ID=20)
and “EDMS for Rent,” by James K. Watson Jr. and Richard Medina (http://www.imagingmagazine.com/db_area/archs/1999/december/img9912op.shtml).