Electronic Records Research and the Web: The Perfect Match? That the World Wide Web has proved to be a positive asset in supporting research about electronic records management is a fitting irony for our digital age. The emergence of the Web not only launched the publication of hundreds of books about the Web’s impact on society, but it also led to great concerns about its fragility and potential loss of data. The formation of the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/) to build a “library of snapshots of publicly accessible Internet sites” and to “provide free access to researchers, historians, and scholars” is the best-known example of such concerns. “The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet — a new medium with major historical significance — from disappearing into the past.” The deepening of the digital age has also spawned a number of research centers, such as The Center for Social Informatics, Indiana University (http://www-slis.lib.indiana.edu/CSI/) “dedicated to support research into information technology and social change. Social Informatics (SI) refers to the body of research and study that examines social aspects of computerization -- including the roles of information technology in social and organizational change, the uses of information technologies in social contexts, and the ways that the social organization of information technologies is influenced by social forces and social practices.” This site includes a number of full-text research papers, although there is none, as yet, specifically focused on records. Still, such sites suggest that there will soon be a melding together of different disciplines interested in transactional records and recordkeeping systems.

Archivists and other records professionals have been engaged in their own research and development on electronic records management, especially over the past decade. To date, this research has been galvanized by three research projects, all developing out of research agendas formulated in the early 1990s. Starting in 1994, “The Preservation of the Integrity of Electronic Records,” spearheaded by Luciana Duranti and Terry Eastwood of the University of British Columbia, sought “To identify and define the requirements for creating, handling and preserving reliable and authentic electronic records” (the final full report is available at http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/duranti/). The project rested on the notions of the Principal Investigators’ of archival science, or as the final report of the project states: “The methodological approach of the research project is deductive, i.e., it begins with a set of general premises and then considers whether these premises hold up in particular instances. The theoretical basis for the general premises is provided by principles and concepts of diplomatics and archival science.” The project determined that the “reliability and authenticity of electronic records are best ensured by embedding procedural rules in the overall records system and by integrating business and documentary procedures, . . . by emphasizing their documentary context, . . . “can only be preserved if they are managed together with all the other records belonging in the same fonds.”

Out of this project followed another project, that of the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems (the InterPARES Project), “a major international research initiative in which archival scholars, computer engineering scholars, national archival institutions and private industry representatives will collaborate to develop the theoretical and methodological knowledge required for the permanent preservation of authentic records created in electronic systems” (http://www.interpares.org/). Although the project has been heralded from many quarters, it is only beginning to post some reports, and these reports are mostly of a very preliminary nature, such as one released in May 2000 on the literature about the appraisal of electronic records systems (http://www.interpares.org/documents/AppraisalLiteratureReview.doc). The project has broken itself into four “domains” -- first, to “identify the elements of electronic records which are necessary to maintain the authenticity of those records over time. Using diplomatic principles, it will include an analysis of the elements of physical and intellectual form which may affect the authenticity and nature of an electronic record”; second, “to determine whether the evaluation of electronic records for permanent preservation should be based on theoretical criteria different from those applied to traditional records,” specifically to “investigate how digital technologies have affected the methodology of appraisal”; third, “to identify and develop the procedures and resources required for the implementation of the conceptual requirements and the criteria identified in the first two domains”; and fourth, “to formulate principles that will guide the development of international, national, and organizational strategies, policies and standards for the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records.” There is also a US-InterPARES Project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, “examining issues relating to the short- and long-term durability, accessibility, and usability of electronic records systems, as well as the authentication of their content” (http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/us-interpares/).

The other major research project was the University of Pittsburgh Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping (http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~nhprc/), examining “variables” affecting the “integration of recordkeeping requirements in electronic information systems. This project was intended to examine one means to rectify such problems. The major objectives of this research project were to develop a set of well-defined recordkeeping functional requirements -- satisfying all the various legal, administrative, and other needs of a particular organization -- which can be used in the design and implementation of electronic information systems. The project also proceeded to consider how the recordkeeping functions are affected by organizational policies, culture, and use of information technology standards, systems design, and implementation.” As I have written extensively about this project in the pages of this technical report (Cox, 1996) there is little need to summarize this project in any additional detail. However, it is important to stress that the sources of this project have much in common with the sources generating the two University of British Columbia projects, such as the various research agenda meetings in the early to mid 1990s (such as the 1997 meeting, see http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~cerar/er-mtg97.html), and the various electronic records management projects that have emerged in the past few years and have been influenced by all the pioneering research projects (a prime example is the electronic records management project carried out by the New York Center for Technology in Government, available at http://www.ctg.albany.edu/projects/gateways/gatewaysmn.html). These relationships suggest a need to build some different types of Web sites than are currently available, an issue I will return to later in this report.

The type of Web site needed might be discernible by considering that there is a definite intellectual linkage between particular research projects as well as affecting the development of certain standards. The Indiana University Electronic Records Project (http://www.indiana.edu/~libarche/index.html) was “designed to implement and test the ‘Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping’ model developed by David Bearman, Richard Cox, and the project personnel associated with the University of Pittsburgh Electronic Records Project.” Here we have an obvious relationship. Less obvious, until closely examined, is the State Records Authority of New South Wales Recorkdeeping Metadata Standard (http://www.records.nsw.gov.au/publicsector/erk/metadata/NRKMSexplan.htm). The Australian records professionals themselves are using standards in very effective ways, building off of their earlier version of the proposed ISO records management standard. The State Records Authority of New South Wales has proposed a “recordkeeping metadata standard, available for examination at this site. As this proposed standard suggests, “metadata” enables the “adequate identification, control and description of records in a manner that allows them [records] to serve as reliable and useable evidence through time.” The elements include category type, identifier, agent, title, date, mandate, place, function, relation, description, language, subject, documentary form, preservation, retrieval, appraisal, control, access, use, use history, event history. Closely related to the New South Wales effort is the National Archives of Australia E-Permanence (http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/splash/intro.html), demonstrating how to transform standards with this new suite of standards for recordkeeping. As part of the policies, the National Archives has drawn together some previously published materials with new documents to create a well-designed reference for Australian agencies that is a model approach for other government archives and records programs. There are descriptions of “recordkeeping responsibilities,” “recordkeeping and the law,” “records in law,” “responsibilities for managing Commonwealth records in the new millennium,” and a summary of how to use the Australian Standard for Records Management (AS 4390). These standards transform into new, more readily accessible policies, reminding all records professionals how they might use the World Wide Web for new, more effective types of advocacy for their professional agendas and the general importance of records for society.

What these electronic research projects reveal about the Web’s value is the speed by which reports on such research can be released. When I was editing the American Archivist I remember the complaints I received from one author on an electronic records management topic about the slowness in getting the essay out. From my perspective, the essay appeared in last than one year, a good effort for a print journal. Using the Web, however, a research team could get its report up in a day or two after completion and advertise its availability via listservs just as quickly. Even if the research team would choose to publish in a refereed electronic journal, the speed-up in release would be considerable in comparison to print journals. My own experience in publishing in electronic journals has ranged from two to no more than six weeks. From this vantage, the World Wide Web truly represents a revolution in distributing research. The opportunity to use the Web for policy matters is another possibility for a revolution in records professionals’ work.