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gils: SAA Program Proposals Requested (part 2)

gils: SAA Program Proposals Requested (part 2)

SAA Program Proposals Requested (part 2)

Albert Minnick (albert.minnick@arch2.nara.gov)
Fri, 20 Sep 1996 08:19:18 -0400 

Message-Id: <s24253b1.054@gpwsmtp.arch2.nara.gov>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 08:19:18 -0400
From: Albert Minnick <albert.minnick@arch2.nara.gov>
To: gils@cni.org, ERECS-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU, Archives@MiamuU.MUOhio.Edu,
Subject:  SAA Program Proposals Requested (part 2)

The following message has been cross posted to several lists please
forgive any duplication. 
***

THE  TRANSFORMATION OF THE ARCHIVAL ENTERPRISE: PROSPECTUS
FOR A SESSION TRACK TO BE FEATURED AT THE 1997 SAA ANNUAL
MEETING

At the end of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the
Twenty-First, the information professions are at the point of a major
paradigm change.  Futurists have described the decades we are
entering now as the *Transformation* Era of the Information Age, when
the converging technologies of digital computing and telecommunications
bring about fundamental change in every aspect of the human
experience.   Technologist James Martin has compared the impact of the
electrification of homes and businesses at the beginning of this century
(bringing with it the telephone, radio and television) with the coming
impact of the building of global communication networks at the beginning
of the next.  According to Martin, every worker and student, and most
homes, will have a powerful computer able to communicate with other
computers to schedule work, accomplish financial transactions, provide
educational opportunities, and participate in the political process.  Most of
mankind's knowledge will become computerized, and computers
eventually will be able to reason with this knowledge using the
techniques of logical inference, artificial intelligence, and natural
language.  The workplace (from factories to farms to offices) will be
extensively automated and the computers of organizations will
communicate automatically with the computers of their customers,
suppliers, banks, and transportation companies.  Homes with wall
screens will have access to an almost limitless quantity of entertainment,
culture and education.  Under construction now is the infrastructure for
this new age--optical fibers, numerous satellites for wireless
communications, and eventually, ten billion intercommunicating
computers, the successor to the current Internet, with libraries of
knowledge vastly greater than the largest paper libraries.

Microsoft Chair Bill Gates has written about the primacy of the
communications revolution in the Transformation Era, suggesting that the
benefits and problems resulting from the power of increased
communication will be much greater than those brought about by the
personal computer.  Management theorist Donald Tapscott warns that
*organizations that cannot understand the new era and navigate a path
through the transition are vulnerable and will be bypassed.*  

The role of the archival profession is certain to be profoundly changed
by these global developments.  As key members of the information
profession and advocates for the essential evidence of our past
experience, archivists must ensure that the recorded information we
hold now or have responsibility for in the future continues to be available
and accessible.  Our first concern in the Information Age has been with
the changing nature of archival materials and the management of
electronic records.

Terry Cook, National Archives of Canada, has described the discussion
on electronic records as ranging from panic in the 1970s, as a *first
generation* of electronic records archivists used social science data
library techniques in managing records as discrete items for their
informational value, to a mid-80s shift toward a more comprehensive
view of the whole range of electronic documents in organizations
(databases, office automation, even  *virtual* documents)  and a
fundamental reassessment of the post-custodial or *virtual* role of
archives.  Perhaps the best known theorist in this area, independent
consultant David Bearman,  has commented on the rediscovered power
of provenance for electronic records, the shift from the traditional
custodial role for archivists to intervention in the organizational behavior
of records creators, and the importance of protecting the *recordness*
of electronic information through preserving contextual information in
metadata encapsulation standards for business acceptable
communications.  Bearman  has worked with Richard Cox and others at
the University of Pittsburgh to produce archival functional requirements
for electronic recordkeeping, currently being tested in a number of
projects sponsored by the NHPRC.  Other functional requirements
projects are underway in Canada (under the leadership of Luciana
Duranti), the United States Department of Defense, the National Archives
of the United States, and the Association for Information and Imaging
Management.  As pilot projects are being planning to test the concept of
a *virtual* archives,  *digital libraries* projects continue  with few
examples of their counterparts for archival materials. 

For manuscript curators, who may not be able to intervene in the
behavior of records creators as described above, the Transformation
Era still brings change in the ways archival materials are described and
made available and the manner in which archival programs advocate,
publicize and disseminate information about their holdings.  One
manuscript curator wrote in a Section newsletter:  *Over the next 25-50
years the computer-savvy scholar may become the dominant user
population and eschew small repositories which will, in turn, find their
bases for support disappearing.  Without some response to the
competition of the World Wide Web and the changing attitudes of
scholars, many small repository collections sit ready to slide into
oblivion...*   In terms of popular lists even within the archival community,
the  once well-known bibliographies of  articles about archival topics
have been superseded by Web pages with compilations of archival sites
on the Internet.

In all types of programs, archivists must be able  to demonstrate their
continued relevance in an information-rich society in which downsizing
and reinvention are the popular management theories of the day.

One of the special features of the 1997 program will be a series of
sessions focusing on the  impact of this Transformation era on the
archival enterprise and ways of *navigating a path* through the transition
for archival programs.  These sessions will draw on those inside and
outside our profession to examine, predict, or recommend ways in which
our profession can adapt to the rapidly changing environment of
networked communications and digital computing.  We invite you to
submit program proposals for this track.  The topics recommended to us
by the SAA Sections and Committees for this Track include:  

*Managing Change in the Information Age
*The Info-Culture
*Identity Crisis for Archivists? Information Auditor?  Knowledge
Navigator?
*The Reinvented Archival Program--Are We Doing the Right Things?
*The Influential Archivist--Making a Difference in Policy, Standards and
Coalitions
*Partnerships in Managing Electronic Records
*Metadata Standards--Changing the Focus to Records Creation*Digital
Delivery of Services to New and Continuing Customers
*Archival Media in the Information Age
*The Enabled Archivist


Please send program proposals (no later than October 11, 1996) to
Program Chair Marie Allen, National Archives and Records Administration
(NI), 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001 (FAX
301-713-6850).
***

Al Minnick
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Center for Electronic Records (NSXA)
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001
301-713-6630 x298 
301-713-6911 (fax)
albert.minnick@arch2.nara.gov

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