Future proof: ensuring the long‐term accessibility of technology‐dependent records
| Pages | 87-93 |
| Date | 01 December 2002 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09565690210454770 |
| Published date | 01 December 2002 |
| Author | Cassandra Findlay |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Future proof: ensuring
the long-term
accessibility of
technology-dependent
records
Cassandra Findlay
For millennia, men and women have used paper
to create everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls to
Neville Chamberlain's ``piece of paper from Herr
Hitler''. In the past few decades, computers,
scanners, cassettes, videos, CDs, minidisks and
floppy discs have been used to replace the
written word. Yet in just a few short years these
digital versions have started to degrade.
The space agency NASA has already lost
digital records sent back by its early probes, and
in 1995 the US government came close to losing
a vast chunk of national census data, thanks to
the obsolescence of its data retrieval technology.
Our digital heritage ± only a few decades old ±
is already endangered, as broadcaster Lloyd
Grossman pointed out last week, ``Last year we
marked the 30th anniversary of e-mail, but it is
salutary that we do not have the first e-mail
message and no knowledge of its contents''
(McKie and Thorpe, 2002).
The challenge
It is indeed worrying for record-keeping
professionals around the world that there
may exist for future generations a ``black
hole'' in terms of our record-based heritage
for the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries. All organisations, whether they
are Government or private sector, large or
small, create and manage records that
depend on technology to be read and
understood. The challenge of ensuring these
records' ongoing accessibility has been
around ever since the first tools were
developed to render information into forms
that were either partially or wholly
unintelligible without the aid of a piece of
technology ± such as the audio recording or
the cinema film. Today, the tools are usually
computer hardware and software; tools that
are more complex and subject to ever-
increasing rates of change. It is in this
challenging and constantly evolving
environment that Government, business and
the wider community expect records to be
kept to support accountability and the
preservation of cultural memory, and to be
kept in such a way that they can be accessed
at any time by those who have a right to
do so.
Addressing the challenge
A range of initiatives designed to address the
challenge of technological obsolescence have
been developed by archives and records
institutions around the globe over the last
The author
Cassandra Findlay is a Senior Project Officer in the
Government Record Keeping Program of the State
Records Authority of New South Wales, Australia.
Keywords
Information management, Records management,
Archives, Preservation, Data retrieval
Abstract
Records and archives professionals around the globe have
been grappling for some time with the challenge of
preserving technology-dependent records. A variety of
approaches and solutions have been developed, many of
which are working effectively now. The State Records
Authority of New South Wales (State Records) has
developed a range of strategies, rules and tools on this
issue for its own jurisdiction ± Government organisations
in the State of New South Wales, Australia. The latest
product developed by State Records is a set of online
guidelines titled, ``Future proof: ensuring the accessibility
of equipment/technology dependent records''. In this
article, the background to the development of the
guidelines is discussed, and the strategies they contain
are described. Some considerations for the management
of technology-dependent State archives are also outlined.
Electronic access
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregisters
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
87
Records Management Journal
Volume 12 .Number 3 .2002 .pp. 87±93
#MCB UP Limited .ISSN 0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/09565690210454770
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