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Instructor: Patricia K. Galloway Class meeting location: SZB 464 Office: SZB 459 Email: galloway@gslis.utexas.edu Teaching Assistant: Ryan Sullivan |
The management, preservation, and use of electronic records are all as yet problems with only partial solutions. There are two reasons for this: the supporting technologies are changing constantly and change is accelerating; and creators and users of these records (if not their potential managers and preservers) are themselves caught up in a culture of immediacy that makes the problems with electronic records invisible until some legal entanglement brings them into sharp focus. Yet as governments and other human institutions have depended upon technologies of memory to assure their longevity in the past, it is a safe bet that they will continue to do so in the future. For that reason these problems must and will be solved by those who are charged with the custody and preservation of such records, at least in a way that will be good enough to achieve the ends of the institutions in question.
The problems are not just technological; if that were so they would (and could) already have been solved. They are, more importantly, social, economic, and political. The archivist called upon to solve them in a real-world setting will have to understand not just a set of ideal archival requirements, but how to cope with applying them to and tailoring them for an actual functional environment, one where change never ceases and getting it right once and for all is not an option.
In this course we will address primarily government records, although we will look at how the same principles apply (or not) to business and personal records. We will be concerned with the issues that cluster around the acquisition, preservation, and use of electronic records. To be more specific:
Please note that this syllabus is evolving and readings after the first few will be added later. Most readings will be available online: if you should encounter difficulty accessing them, please contact me immediately, preferably NOT the day before class. The syllabus will be posted on a class website to be available to you at all times. Any students requiring accommodation for disability or religious holy days should contact me at the beginning of class.
For each class after the second (20% of grade): Each student will be expected to monitor an online publication that is used by records creators and technologists to make decisions about technological adoptions that will benefit their work. A list of these will be given out at the second class meeting, and at every subsequent class meeting each student will prepare to report briefly on an item from the publication s/he is monitoring. These items will be of two kinds, that I am calling "buzzwords " and "emerging technologies," and reports will be made on alternate weeks. The objects of these efforts are to become acquainted with the language of technology and technological marketing and to learn how to evaluate technological innovation. Finally, the class as a whole will constitute a team to post this information online for the information of their professional peers.
Buzzwords: The class will create and maintain a webpage defining current technology buzzwords relevant to the understanding of technologies that support some aspect of electronic records. Emerging technologies: The class will create and maintain a second webpage pointing out the recordkeeping implications of emerging technologies receiving attention in the computing press.
Semester project (30% of grade): Each student will be assigned to a small team with complementary talents and background that will tackle the inventory, appraisal, scheduling, and management planning for some electronic records presently being generated inside of GSLIS, with a view to developing a model for the UT-Austin campus as a whole. The process will involve inventory, appraisal, and scheduling with each team being assigned to an administrative section of GSLIS, followed by class presentation of results; at that point the teams will exchange results and each team will undertake management, custodianship, and access planning for a single genre of records across administrative sections, again followed by class presentation of results. The sequence of the course should permit students carrying out the project tasks to bring their current problems and findings from the project to be discussed in the context of the class discussions and assignments. Although each student will not be expected to have or develop equal technical expertise, all students will be expected to carry out some hands-on technical task as well as the more conventionally "archival" tasks, and all students will be expected to understand both the archival and records management aspects of electronic records archivy.
Essay (15% of grade): Each student will write an evaluative essay of 7-10 double-spaced pages, properly documented from online and offline readings, on one of a list of topics to be announced early in the course. Examples include: Centralized vs distributed custodianship Metadata schemes Migration vs emulation
Exams (mid-term, 10% of grade; final, 25% of grade: So that students will have some idea of how they are doing, we will have a mid-term test covering course content to that point for one hour of the class on October 12, followed in the next class by discussion of the overall results of the test. The final examination will cover the whole course content and the team activities. Extra credit (TBA): I have some very exotic old media (some as old as thirty years) whose data may in fact be lost. Students may have a go at one of these, writing up methods and results, for extra credit.
August 30: Background Activities on day of class: 1) Fill out questionnaire about educational, technical, and archival background Reading for next class: www.mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/er/finrept.html
September 7: What is an electronic record and how can it be managed? Discuss the case study of the Mississippi electronic records project.
Activities on day of class: 1) Choose a publication to monitor from list provided 2) Receive team assignment
Readings for next class: Bradley J. Hulbert, "As a trial attorney, how would I attack the way you manage your electronic records?":
Lawrence Lessig, Code and other Laws of Cyberspace, Part 1
September 14: Statutes, records functions, and human behavior.
Activities on day of class:1) Reports on emerging technologies 2) Teams report on action plans for fieldwork with GSLIS staff
Readings for next class: Dublin Core metadata set version 1.1:
purl.oclc.org/dc/documents/rec-dces-19990702.htm
University of British Columbia project (see especially sections A, C, D, and G):
www.slais.ubc.ca/users/duranti
www.interpares.org/ResearchPlan.htm
University of Pittsburg NHPRC project ("Framework for Business Acceptable Communications"):
David Bearman, "Item Level Control and Electronic Recordkeeping":
Additional resource: Luciana Duranti, Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science top
September 21: Record granularity and metadata. Review metadata schemes from Dublin Core, UBC/InterPARES, and Pittsburgh
Activities on day of class: 1) Reports on buzzwords of the week 2) Teams discuss value of the standard instrument for the inventory/appraisal process, suggest revisions to accommodate electronic records
Reading for next class: DoD 5015.2 specifications and testing pages:
web7.whs.osd.mil/text/p50152s.txt | jitc.fhu.disa.mil/recmgt
Texas electronic recordkeeping guidelines (see especially "Functional Requirements for Managing Electronic Records":
Mississippi guidelines for desktop records, "Part 2: Desktop Files":
September 28: Passive vs active systems. The Department of Defense 5015.2 EDMS-RM model and its viability
Activities on day of class: 1) Emerging technologies of the week
2) Teams discuss kinds of electronic records being discovered, thrash out final version of inventory instrument
Readings for next class: Nick Montfort, "In Search of Webs Past":
www.techreview.com/articles/july00/viewpoint.htm
PROFS case, NARA response Web archive project
www.archive.org/sciam_article.html
For fun: Ghostsites: www.disobey.com/ghostsites
Syracuse/NHPRC study on archiving webpages:
istweb.syr.edu/~mcclure/nhprc/nhprc_title.html
Email as record: PROFS case, NARA response
October 5: Databases, email, websites. The genres of electronic records and implications for their management
Activities on day of class: 1) Buzzwords of the week
2) Paper topics announced
3) Team progress reports top
Readings for next class: Terry Eastman, "Should creating agencies keep electronic records indefinitely? Archives and Manuscripts 24(2): 256-267
Luciana Duranti, "Archives as a Place," Archives and Manuscripts 24(2): 242-255
David Bearman, "Virtual Archives": www.sis.pitt.edu/~nhprc/prog6.html
October 12: Centralized vs distributed models: custodianship
Activities on day of class: 1) Midterm exam
2) Emerging technologies of the week
3) Team progress reports
Readings for next class: Luciana Duranti on diplomatics top
October 19: Maintaining the archival bond (building the memory palace)
Activities on day of class: 1) Buzzwords of the week
2) Team progress reports
Readings for next class: Walter Miller, A Canticle for Liebowitz (Chapters 7 and 8);
Bruce Sterling, Holy Fire, Chapter 1
Additional resources: Dead Media Project site. The original site, ironically enough, seems to be dead. Materials from it and about it can be found at:
www.vfs.com/~deadmedia/frame.html
griffin.multimedia.edu/~deadmedia/speech.htm
www.ctheory.com/event/e075.htmlTime and Bits site see www.longnow.com/10klibrary/TimeBitsDisc/index.html and on that site see especially the paper by Lesk on the amount of information in the world branched to from that page.
For all the details that you will need to cover the themes of migration and emulation, see the excellent "Preserving Access to Digital Information" site's "Digital Preservation Strategies" page, www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/18.html and the connected emulation and migration pages.
You should read two essays pointed to by these pages: Jeff Rothenberg, "Avoiding Technological Quicksand" at www.clir.org/pubs/reports/rothenberg/contents.html this page points to the whole of the essay, which you should read to familiarize yourself with the arguments involved. For the opposing view, see (of course): David Bearman, "Reality and Chimeras in the Preservation of Electronic Records" at the DLib site, www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/bearman/04bearman.html
October 26: Permanence: media, formats, migration, emulation
Activities on day of class: 1) Emerging technologies of the week
2) Team progress reports
November 2: Class presentations on GSLIS records
Activities on day of class: 1) Team presentations on GSLIS records inventories
2) Teams exchange inventory/appraisals and receive genre-based assignment to prepare final proposals
3) Buzzwords of the week
Readings for next class: EAD articles, American Archivist (Acquaint yourself with the basics of EAD, especially if you haven't been introduced to it before.)
TRAILS markup handbook Follow this link and look at pages listed under "Resources for Electronic Liaisons" (I kid you not) On the TRAIL page is a link to the GILS homepage: www.gils.net (everyone is a comedian)
November 9: EAD and markup in general: GILSs and other finding aids
Activities on day of class: 1) Emerging technologies of the week
2) Team progress reports on genres
November 16: Storage implementations and access: data structures, data mining, search engines, agents, and portals
Activities on day of class: 1) Essays due
2) Buzzwords of the week
3) Team progress reports on genres top
November 30: Guaranteeing authenticity: security vs access
Activities on day of class: 1) Team presentations on proposals for GSLIS records management and preservation
December 7: The unofficial record may be electronic too
Activities on day of class: 1) Course evaluation
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