By Terry Eastwood This book reports the findings of a research project on the means of protecting the integrity of active and semi-active electronic records. The project, which is commonly referred to as "the UBC Project," was conceived by two of the authors of this book, Luciana Duranti and Terry Eastwood, and conducted between 1994 and 1997. The third author, Heather MacNeil, who worked formally as the principal research assistant on the project, acted as an equal in the research and in the writing of this book. The project investigated a number of fundamental questions that have arisen over the past decade as a consequence of the rapid development and use of computer technology for the creation, maintenance, and preservation of recorded information. One of the first comprehensive studies of the issues associated with the management of electronic records was conducted by the United Nations. The study, commonly known as the ACCIS report, aimed to "develop guidelines for implementation of electronic archives and records management programmes for use by United Nations organizations, taking into account traditional archives and records management practices. " The report of the study of electronic records in eighteen United Nations organizations identified a number of enduring issues. It recognized that the United Nations had to "distinguish between record and non-record material. "l It recognized the problem of ensuring the authenticity of records, which, rather narrowly, it construed as "assuring legality.

Diplomatics was originally developed in France during the seventeenth century in attempts to prove the authenticity of archival documents. It was later refined in European universities as a legal, historical, and philological discipline, and in the twentieth century it has primarily been applied to medieval and early modern documents in order to evaluate their authority as sources of research. Diplomatics embraces the perspective of the modern archivist, and investigates the origin, development, and application of diplomatic concepts. It examines the organizational and evaluative effectiveness of diplomatic concepts in the context of modern records and archival systems, and looks at the relationship between originality and authenticity in records. The physical and intellectual form of records is examined, and the traditional methodology of diplomatic criticism is clearly explained and augmented by tips concerning its archival use. Diplomatics was originally a series of six articles that appeared in Archivaria, the journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists. In addition to those six articles, this volume contains an introduction that provides a broad synopsis of diplomatics, including its unused potential to help rethink record organization and use in a multimedia age fraught with increasingly complex informational problems.

Groundbreaking ideas in archival description and control Archival authority control is an often ambiguous label that embraces a potentially wide scope. In this active and quickly-evolving field, new methods of clarification are essential for successful archive management. The articles in Respect for Authority: Authority Control, Context Control, and Archival Description offer an innovative approach by marking and exploring a clear distinction between conventional archival authority files and the broader concept of context control. Intended to not only answer important questions but raise worthy new ones as well, Respect for Authority: Authority Control, Context Control, and Archival Description reveals striking new perspectives in managing archival description more effectively. The engaging essays in this collection tackle key issues of archive authority control and offer sound proposals for advancing a new course. Comprehensive in its approach, this text takes an in-depth look at both the International Standard for Archival Authority Records (ISAAR) and the American standard, Describing Archives: a Content Standard (DACS) and considers the place of authority control in these two standards for archival description. In addition, contributors offer practical answers to the thorny issue of identifying the boundaries of a records-creating entity and present criteria for determining when a new entity is established. International in scope, this book presents groundbreaking case studies by archive professionals from Canada, the United States, Italy, and Australia that document the successes of different institutional applications that describe the records-creator first and then link this description to that of the records themselves. Respect for Authority: Authority Control, Context Control, and Archival Description also includes expert discussions of: the role of standards the nature of archives and their relationships with their creators resources necessary to fully document contextualized content the power of provenance possibilities available through a trinity of descriptive entities—records, agents, and functions the potential of “provenance rediscovery” in American repositories postmodern archive theory, multiple provenance, and the reconceptualization of archive context using ISAAR to document records-creating environments challenges inherent in implementing series-based systems of arrangement and description the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Archival Resource Catalog (ARC) digitizing and publishing registers and the development of the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM) and many more! Ideal for archive professionals, manuscript librarians, students, and researchers of archival administration, Respect for Authority: Authority Control, Context Control, and Archival Description not only resolves important questions revealed by these new trends but opens new discussions of a major shift in descriptive practice.

Computer technology has transformed modern society, yet curators wishing to reflect those changes face difficult challenges in terms of both collecting and exhibiting. Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology examines how curators at the history and technology museums of the Smithsonian Institution have met these challenges. Focusing on the curatorial process, the book explores the ways in which curators at the institution have approached the accession and display of technological artifacts. Such collections often have comparatively few precedents, and can pose unique dilemmas. In analysing the Smithsonian’s approach, Foti takes in diverse collection case studies ranging from DNA analyzers to Herbie Hancock’s music synthesizers, from iPods to born-digital photographs, from the laptop used during the filming of the television program Sex and the City to "Stanley" the self-driving car. Using her proposed model of "expert curation", she synthesizes her findings into a more universal framework for undertanding the curatorial methods associated with computer technology and reflects on what it means to be a curator in a postdigital world. Collecting and Exhibiting Computer-Based Technology offers a detailed analysis of curatorial practice in a relatively new field that is set to grow exponentially. It will be useful reading for curators, scholars, and students alike.