University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
A large proportion of the information resource of HEIs is now created, stored, distributed and used in digital forms. Some of this information constitutes records: it acts as evidence of the institution's activities, and various agencies may require that this evidence is produced at some point in the future.
The characteristics of the digital environment present a new series of challenges to the records manager who must ensure that:
The key questions we address in this seminar are:
The speakers come from environments that are concerned with the problems HEIs face. There will be an opportunity to raise and discuss issues with the speakers and members of the Effective Records Management (ERM) team.
This ERM project is based within the University of Glasgow Archives and Business Records Centre and is funded by the JISC Technology Applications Programme (JTAP).
James Currall, Information Strategy Officer, University of Glasgow
Kevin Ashley, Project Manager, UK National Digital Archive of Datasets (NDAD), University of London Computer Centre
Kevin Ashley works at ULCC, which operates computing and network services for the UK and European research, education and public sectors. For the past six years his work has primarily involved large-scale digital resources: their preservation and description and the provision of remote access to them. This has included the modelling of hierarchical filesystems, and the implementation of multiple archival stores on a single, shared preservation system. This involves many types of information (databases, text, images, video and audio) with different access patterns and cataloguing requirements which traditionally would employ dedicated archival stores for each information type.
He is currently Service Manager for NDAD (the UK National Digital Archive of Datasets) operated for the PRO, and the National Data Repository at ULCC, which provides digital archiving and distribution services for organisations such as the British Library. His career has previously involved pattern recognition in medical image analysis, network protocol development, standards development and numerical software tools.
Abstract: Databases - essentially structured information in any form - present particular challenges for those dealing with the preservation of digital records. Unlike word-processed documents, which have obvious and direct analogues in the world of paper-based records, records managers often find it difficult to apply their existing knowledge to the problem of database preservation. In addition, a database may be many things to many people, and it is not always obvious what it is that one should be preserving: the information within the system, or the views of it that different sectors of an organisation may have. Add to this the problem that information in databases is frequently overwritten and modified on a daily or even more frequent basis, and the almost complete absence of standards for database exchange and preservation, and it is unsurprising that many ERM systems simply avoid them altogether.
But we cannot afford to ignore them, since they contain key information about our institutions and the individuals who work and learn in them. In fact, the analogues with paper records series are strong, and the techniques for dealing with databases are not particularly difficult, but success requires close cooperation between computing and records and/or archive professionals which is rare in most institutions.
I will cover issues relating to: the preservation of database information; subsequent access to it; context and provenance; appraisal and selection of what is to be preserved; data protection; IPR in structured data; metadata and documentation; relationship with traditional records; institutional requirements for effective records management in databases; strategic issues.
In doing so I will draw on our experiences in data preservation, from working with 40-year-old government datasets to present-day systems. The problems, and the solutions, are not so much technical as organisational.
Monica Scott, Records Management Adviser British Council
Monica Scott earned her BA at Manchester University and her MLIS at the University of Maryland Graduate school in the US. She has been Records Management Adviser at the British Council since 1996, where the records management team has recently been incorporated into the Knowledge Management team. Before coming to the Council she was Research and Information Manager at the Museum Training Institute, then Lead Body for the Museums sector. Prior to 1992 she held various posts in the Information Services Division of the World Bank in Washington DC., most recently Information Management Specialist.
Abstract: Preservation of electronic documents has become a pre-occupation of records managers and archivists in the last few years with the move away from paper to reliance on the "electronic original". Attention has tended to focus on the technological issues surrounding obsolescence of hard and software, and the problems of continual data migration, but no national archive has yet come up with a definitive solution to this problem. Suggested solutions so far are: printing everything out to paper, emulation, migration and "bundling" - a new concept which combines groups of record objects in a bundle with an indexer and a browser, which can be run on any platform. However, if the electronic records system does not ensure the capture and proper management of objects and their metadata, what is preserved may be fragmentary and unreliable, and the application of technological solutions will be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The long term integrity and reliability of records are a function not only of the technology applied to their management, but also of the policy, procedural and compliance environment in which they are created, managed and disposed of. This paper will explore these areas and link them to the kind of practical concerns records managers and archivists are meeting every day.
Nancy Elkington, Research Libraries Group
Nancy Elkington is a program officer with the Research Libraries Group, an international non-for-profit membership consortium of over 160 universities, national libraries, archives, historical societies, museums and other institutions supporting research and learning. Since 1996, Elkington has been based in London and works closely with over 30 UK, Ireland and continental European members of RLG. A program officer since 1989, Elkington has published and given presentations on topics including interlending, archival microfilming, finding aids, and traditional and digital preservation. Prior to joining RLG, she worked at the University of Michigan as a preservation librarian. Elkington received her MSLS (Master of Science in Library Science) in 1984 from Wayne State University where she specialized in archival administration and preservation.
Abstract: We are all increasingly familiar with metadata schemes for resource discovery, for making electronic resources available in the Web environment. Resource discovery is aided by common descriptive approaches that include MARC, Dublin Core, and other schema. As we plan for the long term retention and long term access to archived documents and objects, we need to think beyond resource discovery toward long term resource management. Several projects are underway, testing and demonstrating the ability of research repositories to preserve digital resources. Most of these efforts are grappling with the need to identify not only descriptive metadata elements, but also a range of management data elements that will facilitate the storage and management of data over the long term. RLG and OCLC are working in partnership with institutions in Europe, North America and Australia to synthesize the current best thinking about digital preservation metadata.