Authentic Electronic Records: Strategies for Long-Term Access
This
book review was written by Rick Barry and aimed at chief information officers
and other information science and technology professionals. It was originally
published in the American Archivist (ISSN 0360-9081), Vol. 63,
No. 2, Fall/Winter 2000, the semi-annual journal of the Society of American Archivists (SAA).
Authentic Electronic Records is a book about the importance of, and options
surrounding, continuing long-term access to the ever-growing mountain of digital
information. The author estimates that
this is currently in the range of 600 - 1000 Petabytes (one Petabyte being
equivalent to one million Gigabytes) or comparable to 60 billion 500 page books
per annum. Most of those ‘books’ are
not electronic records or otherwise of continuing organizational or societal
value and therefore are not necessarily worthy of saving for long-term
use. Thus they would not constitute a
major access problem during their relatively short life span. Nonetheless, even
the modest 5-10 percent that might be of continuing or archival value to an
organization or society, represents an imposing challenge to chief information
and knowledge officers (CIO/CKO), recordkeeping professionals, webmasters,
website content managers, and other modern information managers.
The
focus of the book, commendably, is on long-term access to authentic digital information rather than simply its
preservation. This keeps the thrust of the discussion centered on future uses of current digital information – a
welcome departure from more limited discussions of preservation
technologies. It is no coincidence that
Archivist of the U. S., John Carlin has made “ready access” the cornerstone of his strategic plan for the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). It is a concept central to NARA’s mission and, whether stated as
such or not, should be central to any information-based system. Indeed, use of high quality legacy
information that in past has been considered of little value outside of records
centers or archives, is now a key objective of the best knowledge-based
systems. For this reason, anyone
concerned with the justification and design of such systems will find this book
very useful.
But
this is more than a book on long-term digital access. It is a knowledge resource in the full sense of the term in that
it integrates technical information, best practice lessons and human expert
lists on digital access: it includes
theory, a summary of several major electronic records research projects,
commentary on best practice, over 300 footnotes, 16 pages of bibliographic
citations and the names of dozens of contributors and reviewers of earlier
drafts and footnoted professionals (albeit without contact information) that
together constitute a kind of “experts directory”, a distinguishing element of
the best knowledge-based systems.
Although 248 pages long including appendices, the main body of the four
chapters is a relatively crisp, 130 pages, each with rich footnotes for
drilling down into specific topics.
The
author disposes up front of issues related to current operational records on
the presumption that these will not constitute a serious access problem. Fair
enough for the limited purposes of this book that the author set out for
himself. However, the book’s contents
offer both a warning and sound advice for CIOs and system designers faced with
upgrades of operational systems. The past few years have been characterized by
massive replacement of legacy systems as part of Y2K fixes, especially using
enterprise resource planning systems, and by simply upgrading from one
technological platform to another. We have even learned that it is
possible to upgrade to the next version of the same vendor’s word processing system
and lose easy access to information created in the earlier version. Thus, system designers should be advised to
factor in the cost of making the necessary provisions to ensure continuing
access to legacy information when replacing or upgrading current systems. Similarly, executives should be advised to
require including the costs for ensuring continuing access to such information
in any bids to replace existing systems.
Dollar
makes an important and useful distinction between the processability and the migration
of digital information. Maintaining
processability refers to ways of addressing simpler accessibility challenges
that typically can be achieved by renewal
(the regular re-copying of digital information from a storage medium before its
“best-used-before” date expires, and excellent National Media Lab tables are
provided to estimate these dates) and by conversion
(regeneration from one software version to the next or from one common word
processing, spreadsheet, presentation or other system to another – say Word
Perfect™ to MS Word™ or Lotus
Freelance™ to MS Powerpoint™ – that is performed automatically by those systems
that Dollar generically refers to as “Operational Software Applications”).
Migration is
necessary for the more complex challenges that require the transfer of
information from one technology platform to another – say Lotus Notes™ to Tower
TRIM CAPTURA™ – where customized software is typically required to make the
transfer. Both are means of ensuring
accessibility in changing technology environments, their applicability
depending on the complexity of the change from one architecture to another, and
both present very different approaches and cost considerations. The author also takes a very practical and
often overlooked point of view: let’s
not focus too far into the future because, as we have learned, there will
likely be significant changes in the technologies of conversion and migration
just as there
have been everywhere else, hopefully including some fixes to what are today
intractable problems.
Too
often, technical books are written with the presumption that the reader
understands the importance of the technical material presented. In such cases, many readers get lost in the
“how to” without ever considering the “why to” implications in human,
organizational or social terms. This
one includes not only concepts and technical information but also a Technology
Primer appendix and a particularly well done Introduction that includes the
broader raison d’être and contextual
importance of continued access to in a modern digital world[1]. CIOs and technologists, not well known for
taking a long-term view, will find the opening pages of this section very
useful in deepening their own understanding of why it matters at all to worry
about continuing access beyond a few years.
Moreover, it will provide them, as well as archivists, with a line of
reasoning that will help bring their chief executives around to a more
enlightened understanding that continuing access is not simply a technical
issue but one that needs to be addressed by collaboration among executives,
operational managers, technical and recordkeeping professionals.
The
author has carefully designed the flow of concepts as reflected in an excellent,
multi-level Table of Contents. This
makes the work amenable to serial treatment for a graduate or continuing
education program or simply for independent professional reading. However, a good TOC is no substitute for a good index. Since
it is also an excellent reference book for
professionals in business and government, the author (or publisher) would have done us all a great favor by including a robust index, particularly since the same topics appear in different
contexts in different chapters, bibliographic citations, footnotes and annexes.
An antidote for no index, of course, would be to make the book available in CD
form along with the paper version.
While
the concepts and broad options for digital document preservation, conversion,
migration and access remain relatively stable over time, the actual
technologies for carrying out these tasks are constantly changing, making any
listing of specific software, for example, quickly outdated. Thus, while it is valuable to inform the
reader of records management systems that were compliant with the U. S.
Department of Defense 5015.2 Records
Management Applications (RMA) standard at the time the book was written, it
should be noted that the standard itself will be revised over time and that
these certifications are time limited and require periodic
re-certifications. The current standard
and listing of compliant systems can be found on the DOD Joint Interoperability
Test Command website http://jitc.fhu.disa.mil/recmgt/.
Although
it is dense reading both because of subject matter and the absence of graphics
(there are three) that are often used by authors to facilitate the reading of
technical material, this is 130 pages of compactly packaged state-of-play,
state-of-art, information. However, it
is the best consolidation of information on the subject and the best treatment
of accessibility with authenticity that I have seen. It is a book that CIO/CKOs, information managers, archivists and
records managers need to read and will want to mark up with their own notes and
have within reach on their bookshelves.
Perhaps
the best recommendation for this book is what appears to be a damning reality: the disturbing fact that unlike most “best
practice” discussions, the best practices in this book do not point to model
organizations using the very practical recommendations offered by the author. This is no omission on the Dollar’s part,
but rather a sad affirmation of the fact that there remains a dearth of living,
breathing organizations that the author could point to as models of excellence
in implemented electronic recordkeeping systems even: 10 years following the publication of the UN report
on Managing Electronic Records: Issues
and Guidelines where a number of related issues were raised and options
outlined; four years after the University of Pittsburgh Functional
Requirements project that outlined requirements at the organizational,
recordkeeping system and record levels; numerous other pilot and research
projects in the U.S. at universities in New York, Indiana, Ohio and elsewhere,
many funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission; major meetings on electronic records research and
development issues in Washington, Ann Arbor and Pittsburgh; international
projects in Canada, Australia, Sweden; the initiation of an integrated
international project InterPARES (International Research on Permanent Authentic
Records in Electronic Systems) and countless largely excellent professional
papers on the subject in journals the world over.
This
indictment includes even the internal recordkeeping operations of
most national archives around the world that have a special interest, professional
leadership obligation and in some cases a legal mandate to ease the way into
electronic records for the rest of the world.
A great deal of progress has been made in the past 10 years, no doubt,
especially in the policy area. But
regrettably little has been done in terms of implemented enterprise-wide
systems beyond those spawned by the commendatory establishment of the DOD
5015.2 RMA standard that has been endorsed by the Archivist for use throughout
the U.S. Government. Even there, however, in most cases TRIM, FOREMOST and other 5015.2-compliant systems are being used for plain document
management purposes without the full recordkeeping functionality they afford, or they are being used as trustworthy recordkeeping systems but are not
implemented on an enterprise basis. Perhaps it is time that CIOs and CKOs
learned the difference between yesterday’s electronic document management
systems (EDMS) and today’s enterprise recordkeeping systems that have all the
functionality of EDMS but also operate in a trustworthy recordkeeping
environment. This might just happen if
they began reading books like this one.
Authentic
Electronic Records: Strategies for
Long-Term Access, by Charles
Dollar, Cohasset Associates, Chicago, 1999, 248 pp. Paperbound. $75. ISBN: 0-9700640-0-4. For further information contact info@cohasset.com.
Reviewer: Richard
E. Barry.