Electronic Records Management (INLS 525)
School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Spring 2013
Time: Tuesday, 6:00-8:45
Location: Manning 117
Credits: 3
Instructor: Seth Shaw
Phone: 919.684.6181
Email: seth.shaw [then] unc.edu
Course Description
The management and preservation of electronic records is essential for maintaining institutional accountability; protecting the rights of citizens, employees and customers; supporting the efficient operation of contemporary organizations; perpetuating valuable forms of social memory; and helping individuals to integrate aspects of the past into their sense of identity.
Current electronic recordkeeping is in a state of relative neglect. At their most basic level, electronic records problems are related to proper configuration and management of computer components (hardware and software). The good news is that actual and potential solutions to the technological issues abound. The bad news is that the behavioral, organizational, institutional and professional underpinnings are generally not yet in place to implement the technological solutions. This places a profound set of challenges and opportunities in the hands of SILS students about to enter the workforce.
In this course, we will begin by considering what it means to be an electronic record and the social implications. We will then gradually build up a set of concepts, tools and strategies that information professionals can use to help shape more appropriate, valuable and sustainable recordkeeping systems.
Course Objectives
- Gain awareness of trends and practices in contemporary recordkeeping environments.
- Understand the nature of electronic records in different organizational, technological, legal, cultural, and business environments.
- Be aware of social, legal, and policy implications for individuals and organizations keeping records in electronic form.
- Be able to analyze a variety of problems related to electronic records and propose solutions that are appropriate in particular contexts.
- Understand the differences between recordkeeping systems and other types of information systems.
- Be able to evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches, methods, and technologies for managing electronic records.
- Understand the technical and institutional requirements associated with long-term retention and preservation of electronic records.
- Be able to evaluate various electronic recordkeeping strategies.
Course Expectations
- Complete readings BEFORE CLASS each week. Manage your time accordingly.
-
Written work should be of high quality. If you have concerns about writing, address them early and often.
- Come to class on time
- Participate in discussions - counts as 20% of your total grade for the course
- Demonstrate that you have read the material, understood, and synthesized it.
- Tell us when you do not agree. This is a discussion forum, not just a lecture session. No one in the room has a monopoly on correct answers. You are encouraged to question the assumptions of the readings, your instructors and your fellow students. Your comments should reflect mutual respect and should not attack individuals, but ideas are presented in order for you to analyze and critique them.
Special Needs: If you feel that you may need an accommodation for a disability or have any other special need, please make an appointment to discuss this with the instructor. I will best be able to address special circumstances if I know about them early in the semester. My contact information is listed at the beginning of this syllabus.
Important Note on Plagiarism
It is very important that you both attribute your sources and avoid excessive use of quotes. Be aware of the University of North Carolina policy on plagiarism. Your written work must be original. Ask if you have any doubts about what this means.
All cases of plagiarism (unattributed quotation or paraphrasing) of anyone else's work, whether from someone else's answers to homework or from published materials, will be officially reported and dealt with according to UNC policies (Instrument of Student Judicial Governance, Section II.B.1. and III.D.2).
Evaluation
- Active & informed class participation: 20%
- Mini-assignments: 20%
- Mid-term Exam: 20%
- Tools Paper: 20%
- Final Exam: 20%
Based on UNC Registrar Policy for graduate-level courses, both assignment and semester grades will be H, P, L or F. Few students will obtain an "H," which signifies an exceptionally high level of performance (higher than an "A" in an A-F systems). The following is a more detailed breakdown:
- H = Superior work: complete command of subject, unusual depth, great creativity or originality
- P+ = Above average performance: solid work somewhat beyond what was required and good command of the material
- P = Satisfactory performance that meets course requirements (expected to be the median grade of all students in the course).
- P- = Acceptable work in need of improvement
- L = Unacceptable graduate performance: substandard in significant ways
- F = Performance that is seriously deficient and unworthy of graduate credit
Note: The above breakdown is for individual assignments. Final grades in the course will not reflect + or - designations (e.g. there will be Ps but no P+s or P-s).
Key Dates
- 1/15 - First Class
- 3/5 - Receive Midterm Exam
- 3/12 - Midterm Exam Due
- 3/12 - No Class - Spring Break
- 3/19 - Receive Tools Assignment
- 4/23 - Tools Assignment Due & Last Class
- 4/30 - Final Exam
Outline
Week 01 (1/15) - Introduction; Recordness
Topics
- Introduction to the Course
- Goals and Aspirations for Electronic Recordkeeping
- Electronic Recordness
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 02 (1/22) - New Forms of Expression and Interaction (Recordness continued)
Topics
- Intellectual Entities & Representations
- Electronic Records as Documents
- Genres & Affordances
- Mutability
- Reliability & Authenticity
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 03 (1/29) - Levels of Representation & Curatorial Implications (i.e. How it works)
Topics
- Materiality
- How computers remember
- Layers of representation
- How computers communicate
- Backup, redundancy, and recovery
Readings
- Trace, Ciaran B. "Beyond the Magic to the Mechanism: Computers, Materiality, and What It Means for Records to Be 'Born Digital.'" Archivaria 72 (Fall 2011): 5-27
- Kirschenbaum, Matthew et al. "Digital Materiality: Preserving Access to Computers as Complete Environments." iPRES 2009: The Sixth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects. 2009.
- Kirschenbaum, Matthew G., Richard Ovenden, and Gabriela Redwine. "Digital Forensics and Born-Digital Content in Cultural Heritage Collections." Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010.
Read: sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.5, and 4. The rest is optional but recommended.
- Vaughan-Nichols, Steven. "The History of the Floppy Disk." Input Output. 2012-08-27.
Optional.
- Owens, Trevor. "The is of the Digital Object and the is of the Artifact." The Signal: Digital Preservation. Library of Congress. 25 Oct 2012.
Optional
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 04 (2/5) - Levels of Representation & Curatorial Implications, cont. (i.e. Complications & Counter Measures)
Topics
- Obsolescence & Legacy Data
- Lock-In
- Interoperability
- Format Registries
- Migration
- Emulation
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 05 (2/12) - Recordkeeping Expectations & Practices
Topics
- The Data Flood
- Personal Recordkeeping
- Institutional Recordkeeping
- Documenting Humanity
Readings
- Gleick, James. "New News Every Day." The Information: a history, a theory, a flood. New York: Pantheon Books, 2011. 398-412.
- John, Jeremy Leighton, Ian Rowlands, Peter Williams, and Katrina Dean. "Digital Lives: Personal Digital Archives for the 21st Century >> an Initial Synthesis." 2010. vi-xviii.
- Kolowich, Steve. "Archiving Writers' Work in the Age of E-Mail." The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 April 2009.
- Gantz, John, and David Reinsel. "Extracting Value from Chaos." EMC Corporation. June 2011.
- Melvin, Valerie C. "Challenges in Managing Electronic Records." Washington, DC: United States Government Accountability Office, 17 June 2010.
- Salaheldeen, Hany. "Losing My Revolution: A Year After the Egyptian Revolution, 10% of the Social Media Documentation Is Gone." Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group 11 Feb. 2012.
The author links several articles in the first paragraph. If you write your mini-assignment on this topic please read some of them.
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 06 (2/19) - Institutional Records Management
Topics
- Records Lifecycle
- Retention Scheduling & Appraisal
- Reliability & Authenticity
- Document & Records Management Systems
- Managing Web Records
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 07 (2/26) - Making the Case for Recordkeeping
Topics
- Why?
- Discovery & Sense-making (e.g. Big data)
- Cost-Benefit & Return-on-Investment Approaches
- Risk Management
- Business continuity management
Readings
- Cumming, Kate. "Our Top 5 - Why Recordkeeping Is Awesome!" Future Proof - Protecting our digital future 8 June 2012.
- Andolsen, Alan A. "Investing Wisely for the Future." Information Management Journal 38.5 (2004): 47-54.
- Bailey, Steve. "Measuring the impact of records management." Records Management Journal 21.1 (2011): 46-68.
- Gingrich, Laurie L., and Brian D. Morris. "Retention and Disposition of Structured Data: The Next Frontier for Records Managers." Information Management Journal 40.2 (2006): 30-34,36,39.
- Negash, Solomon "Business Intelligence," Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume13, 2004) 177-195.
- Knight, Janet. "Our Manifesto for Good Recordkeeping and Key Ways to Achieve It!" Future Proof - Protecting our digital future 4 July 2012.
Optional
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 08 (3/5) - Learning & Changing the Rules: Laws, Policies, Standards, and Guidelines
Note: class was canceled due to family illness.
Topics
- Warrant
- Access, Openness, & Discovery
- Legal Requirements
- Standards & Guidance (e.g. Sedona Principles, MoReq2, OAIS, TRAC, and CMIS)
- Creating Standards & Guidance Documents
Readings
- Wallace, David A. "Electronic records management defined by court case and policy." Information Management Journal 35.1 (2001): 4-14.
- Gable, Julie. "Navigating the Compliance Landscape." Information Management Journal 39.4 (2005): 28-35.
- Edwards, Paul N. "'A Vast Machine': Standards as Social Technology." Science 304.5672 (2004): 827-828.
Optional
Slides: Markdown & HTML
Standards & Guidance Documents
Week 09 (3/12) - No Class
Week 10 (3/19) - Repositories
Topics
- Defining "Repository"
- Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS)
- Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDR)
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 11 (3/26) - Acquisition & Ingest
Topics
- Working w/ Producers
- Push v. Pull
- Acquiring media
- Receipt over the wire
- Acquiring from the web
- Accessioning Workflows
Readings
- Redwine, et. al. Born Digital: Guidance for Donors, Dealers, and Archival Repositories. Media Commons, January 2013.
- Christopher Hilton. "Trust Me, I'm an Archivist". October 2010, Ariadne Issue 65
- Smith, Kari R. "A Word About Digital Files and Acquisition Negotiations." Engineering the Future of the Past 13 Nov. 2012.
- Erway, Ricky. You've Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing Born-Digital Content Received on Physical Media. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research, 2012.
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 12 (4/2) - Preservation
Topics
- Computer Museums
- Digital->Analog Conversion
- Migration
- Emulation
- Metadata
Readings
- Lavoie, Brian, and Lorcan Dempsey. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at...Digital Preservation." D-Lib Magazine 10.7/8 (2004)
- "Preserving Digital Records: Guidelines for Organizations." InterPARES 2
- Montfort, Nick, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. "Acid-Free Bits." 14 June 2004.
- Fino-Radin, Ben. Digital Preservation Practices and the Rhizome Artbase. Rhizome, 2011.
- Rusbridge, Chris. "Excuse Me ... Some Digital Preservation Fallacies?" Ariadne 46 (2006)
- Web, Colin, David Pearson, and Paul Koerben. "'Oh, You Wanted Us to Preserve That?!' Statements of Preservation Intent for the National Library of Australia's Digital Collections." D-Lib Magazine 19.1/2 (2013)
- Liu, Alan et al. "Born-Again Bits: A Framework for Migrating Electronic Literature." 8 Aug. 2005.
(A follow-up to "Acid-Free Bits.") Optional.
- Webre, Tess. "Snow Byte and the Seven Formats: A Digital Preservation Fairy Tale." The Signal: Digital Preservation 15 Mar. 2013.
Optional.
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 13 (4/9) - Arrangement & Description
Topics
- Analog v. Digital Processing
- Current Approaches
Readings
Week 14 (4/16) - Access & Use
Topics
- Copyright
- Restrictions & Identity Management
- Managing user expectations
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Week 15 (4/23) - Project Management and Implementation
Topics
- Early Intervention
- Resource Scarcity & Practicality
- Project Management
- System Implementation
- Some Lessons Learned
Readings
Slides: Markdown, HTML, Web Slides
Final Exam (4/30)