Dear Rick,
Many thanks for your reply and comments. As you probably guessed my
original message was intended to be slightly provocative and to
stimulate some (in my view much needed) debate as to the future role of
our profession in our rapidly changing information environment. That
yours was virtually the only response I received - either on or off
list - would seem to further confirm my view.
The gist of my argument was thus not against MyLifeBits, or any other
personal electronic archive product, but was intended to draw attention
to some of the trends that are developing in information/archives
management and what they may mean for our profession.
To offer an opinion on some of your specific points:
" The fact that some individuals may choose to save everything
> indiscriminately, does not mean that everyone will"
Agreed, but this is increasingly being perceived as the goal by many
people and that in itself is interesting. One former colleague of mine
informed me that at a conference he went to recently it was revealed
that when NARA accessioned the Bill Clinton archive recently they
archived *everything*. An exceptional case perhaps, but one indicative
of an emerging trend? How many archivists would in previous years have
been involved in the appraisal of such a collection? What is the focus
of the work and methodology of those archivists currently working on
this collection?
"Yet this is surely the stuff that many current and future manuscript
archivist must deal with. Thus, I think this development is a really
good sign for the archives community."
Again agreed. My concern, however, is how prepared the current and
future archive profession is/will be to fulfil this role when the
material concerned is currently in, and needs to be preserved in,
electronic format. This *should* be our role, but are we ready and
willing to take it on? And if we are not, who will and what will be the
consequences for our profession? Too often there appears to be this
perception that dealing with electronic records is something for
records managers and not archivists. Not only is this untrue it may
well be the case that these old distinctions have little relevance
anymore.
I do not intend to imply that we are all doomed and that it is a
picture of dispair. Quite the opposite. This is an age of
unprecedented opportunity and potential for professional development.
History has never been as popular in our society and culture as now
(beaten only by gardening and cooking in our TV schedules it sometimes
seems). We have the technology to manage and access our collections in
a way that would make our predecessors turn green with envy and there
are challenges ahead of supreme importance to our society that no one
yet knows the answers to, but to which our profession can play a
*vital* role. And yet if we miss that opportunity now we may well find
ourselves a part of the history that until now it has fallen to us to
preserve.
Regards
Steve
Please note that the views expressed here are my own views and not
necessarily that of my employer
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002 00:08:34 EST Rick Barry <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> In a message dated 11/22/02 7:38:43 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
> > Now if you follow the MyLifeBits vision of the future such skill will
> > soon be redundent. Why bother trying to work out what to keep when you
> > can keep it all? Why waste your efforts on appraisal and selection
> > when it could be better spent refining search engines and the user
> > interfaces that will enable people to search literally everything they
> > have ever created or used?
>
> Dear Steve and colleagues: I understand and appreciate what you are saying,
> Steve, but I'm not sure that such a dim view is warranted of MyLifeBits and
> hopefully other such personal ER tools that may emerge in competition with
> Microsoft. There has been such a dearth of discussion in the professional
> community and fewer products related to personal electronic records. Yet
> this is surely the stuff that many current and future manuscript archivist
> must deal with. Thus, I think this development is a really good sign for the
> archives community.
>
> The fact that some individuals may choose to save everything
> indiscriminately, does not mean that everyone will. Shortly after retiring
> from the World Bank in 1992, I transferred the first corpus of personal
> electronic records to the Bank Archives. Admittedly they were business
> related; nevertheless, they were personal business records maintained over a
> 9 year period using a personal e-filing system and constituting about 3000
> email records in digital form. They represented about 7-8% of the email I
> had sent/received since I began using email in late-1983/early-1984 -- about
> the same as the proportion of Bank archives to total records at that time. I
> think many others will do the same thing give the opportunity, including for
> their purely personal, non-business records. And even for those who do store
> and transfer all of it to some archival institution, the role of the
> archivist will still be to assess those records according to usual and
> customary appraisal criteria and practices and inform the donor/estate that,
> lacking justification to the contrary, that is what the institution considers
> appropriate to preserve on a continuing basis.
>
> Of course, if the personal records are NOT handed over to an institution for
> archival safekeeping, then we should perhaps be happy that they were NOT
> appraised by someone ill equipped to do so. If, many years later, that
> person's personal electronic records become important, then it will still not
> be too late to subject them to appropriate and professional appraisal and we
> will be glad that we had the whole corpus on which to make such decisions.
>
> In short, I think the risks associated with providing advanced digital
> personal recordkeeping tools to individuals (mainly whether the terabytes of
> data storage will be matched with appropriate information management and
> navigation tools) are far less than than the risks we are subject to in the
> current situation without such tools.
>
> Regards,
>
> Rick Barry
> www.mybestdocs.com
----------------------
Steve Bailey,
Records Manager
Joint Information Systems Committee
Tel: 07092 302850
Email: [log in to unmask]
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