Electronic Journals. The records professions have long built their knowledge base around a small number of print journals, such as the American Archivist and the Records Management Quarterly (now the Information Management Journal). These journals have featured basic and applied research, opinion pieces, case studies, and reviews of other published materials. These journals have built a major unifying aspect to the professions, although they have been victims of the well-documented problems that particular disciplines often do not read journals outside of their own fields. Even within the records professions, which must look like one discipline to those on the outside, most archivists read their own journals and not those of records managers and vice versa. Moreover, these print journals are often slow to produce articles – it is not uncommon for two years to pass before a manuscript becomes a published essay – hindering their value for topics in which timeliness of publication is more critical (such as on electronic records management). The bantering on the listservs helps only to a limited degree, as these discussions often do not focus on more substantive knowledge, cite publications, or provide reasoned reflections on topics; in fact, many discussion threads only reveal how cut off from a common core knowledge many working archivists and records managers seem to be.

The emergence of the World Wide Web has given rise to electronic journals or hybrid electronic-print journals possessing substantial promise for the records professions. A good resource for looking for electronic journals is the ARL Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists (http://www.arl.org/scomm/edir/archive.html), available in its older version (the current version is sold in print form). For additional background about electronic journals and electronic publishing in general, records professionals should follow the Journal of Electronic Publishing (http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/), with essays from “scholars and others who are thinking interestingly about electronic publishing.”

There are a number of electronic journals focused on electronic resources, not surprisingly, and some of these feature articles and other materials of interest to records professionals. Ariadne magazine (http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/) is “aimed at both librarians and information science professionals in academic libraries, and also to interested lay people in the UK Higher Education community. Its principal geographic focus is the UK, but it is widely read in the US and worldwide.” The magazine “describes and evaluates sources and services available on the Internet, and of potential use, to librarians and information professionals” and “reports to the library community at large on progress and developments within the UK Electronic Libraries Program, and on JISC-funded and other information services, keeping the busy practitioner abreast of current relevant developments in digital library initiatives.” For a closely related records management article see Sheila Corrall, “Knowledge Management: Are We in the Knowledge Management Business?,” asking “if this is a new phrase in place of 'information management', or a new concept all together” (http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue18/knowledge-mgt/). Information Research (http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infres/ircont.html) is a “free, international, scholarly journal, dedicated to making freely accessible the results of research across a wide range of information-related disciplines,” publishing “both refereed papers and working papers in the fields of information science, information management, information systems, information policy and librarianship.” An example of a study that should be of interest to records professionals is Joyce Kirk, “Information in Organisations: Directions for Information Management” (http://www.shef.ac.uk/~is/publications/infres/paper57.html). The journal Informing Science (http://inform.nu/) “endeavors to provide an understanding of the complexities in informing clientele. Fields from information systems, library science, journalism in all its forms to education all contribute to this science. These fields, which developed independently and have been researched in separate disciplines, are evolving to form a new transdiscipline, Informing Science.” An example of an article is Peter Gottschalk, “Information Systems Executives: The Changing Role of New IS/IT Leaders,” available at http://inform.nu/Articles/Vol3/v3n2p31-39.pdf.

One of the great advantages of the Web is the opportunity for print newsletters and information sources to create mirror electronic versions providing the ability to search archives of the publication and to follow links to related sources. A good example is InfoWorld. “In print weekly and online daily, InfoWorld (http://www.infoworld.com/) provides in-depth technical analysis on key products, solutions and technologies for sound buying decisions and business gain. InfoWorld.com is the place to turn for the latest breaking news, in-depth coverage of the issues, trends, and products that run your enterprise. InfoWorld.com also features interactive discussion forums, trusted industry columnists and incisive product test results and reviews backed by the renowned InfoWorld Test Center.” Another example is CIO Magazine (http://www.cio.com/) with considerable information on information technology and knowledge management within the corporation. The pre-eminent, or at least trendy, example is Wired Digital (http://hotwired.lycos.com/) providing a “range of dynamic online products that help people put emerging technologies to use in their personal and professional lives. In brief, we provide tools for innovators.” Wired Digital's “current properties” are “HotBot (www.hotbot.com), the Web's best-rated search engine; Wired News (www.wired.com), the premier service for news of the digital world; HotWired (www.hotwired.com), the award-winning site about Web technology and culture; Webmonkey, the leading Web enthusiast's how-to site; and Suck (www.suck.com), featuring unpopular opinions on pop culture.”

There are an increasing number of electronic journals in disciplines closely related to the fields of archives and records management. “Beginning with the March/April issue, inform magazine and its European counterpart, Document World combined to form a brand new magazine called e-doc (http://www.aiim.org/inform/) [mentioned earlier in this technical report]. The journal provides information to make better decisions on all aspects of e-business management.” An example of a records management article is Deborah Skaggs, “Electronic Records Preservation: An Emerging Technology to Augment Electronic Documents Management and Electronic Recordkeeping Systems” (http://www.aiim.org/inform/jan99/jan99p35.html). Cultural Resource Management (http://www.cr.nps.gov/crm/), a journal of the U.S. National Park Service, is another example. Some of these issues relate to archives and records management. Volume 22, no. 2 (1999) concerned “Archives at the Millennium,” with articles on electronic records management, records management, preservation, and particular challenges facing NPS sites and their records. D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is part of the D-Lib Forum supporting the “community of researchers and developers working to create and apply the technologies leading to the global digital library. Its goal is to support and facilitate collaborative activities, information exchange, and communications of this community. D-Lib Forum will provide support for communications and information exchange amongst the D-Lib community. This includes publication of an on-line magazine (D-Lib) as well as other elements as needed, such as web pages and electronic mailing lists.” The journal abounds with articles, reviews, case studies, and news about matters of interest to records professionals, such as Peter Lyman and Brewster Kahle, “Archiving Digital Cultural Artifacts: Organizing an Agenda for Action,” http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july98/07lyman.html, in which they argue that the “pace of technical change makes digital information disappear before we realize the importance of preserving it. Like oral culture, digital information has been allowed to become a medium for the present, neither a record of the past nor a message to the future. Unless, that is, we redesign it now.” Another related journal is RLIG DigiNews published by the Research Libraries Group, in cooperation with the Cornell University Library Department of Preservation and Conservation. RLG DigiNews (http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/) is a “bimonthly web-based newsletter intended to: focus on issues of particular interest and value to managers of digital initiatives with a preservation component or rationale; provide filtered guidance and pointers to relevant projects to improve our awareness of evolving practices in image conversion and digital archiving; announce publications (in any form) that will help staff attain a deeper understanding of digital issues.” An example of an article is Caroline R. Arms, “Keeping Memory Alive: Practices for Preserving Digital Content at the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress,” available at http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews4-3.html#feature1. Finally, Ubiquity (http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/) is a “Web-based publication of the Association for Computing Machinery, dedicated to fostering critical analysis and in-depth commentary on issues relating to the nature, constitution, structure, science, engineering, technology, practices and paradigms of the IT profession.” For an example of a closely related records management article, see “ElectronicSignature Legislation” By Ephraim L. Michael, Esq., summarized as “For electronic commerce to thrive, individuals and businesses must be able to sign on the dotted line in cyberspace” (available at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/e_michael_1.html).

One would assume that there are electronic journals directly related to the fields of archives and records management. There appears to have been some efforts that have not been maintained. Provenance (http://www.netpac.com/provenance/vol1/no1/index.html), with a focus on the information professions including archivists and records managers, seems to have stayed in business from 1995 into 1997. However, there are other electronic journals that are so closely related to the records professionals as to act as surrogate official professional journals in our field. An example is First Monday (http://www.firstmonday.dk/) “discussing issues of current interest to the Internet community; research results of a high scientific standard; and, technical notes examining a specific aspect of the Internet.” First Monday includes many articles published about archives and records management, including Susan S. Lukesh “E-Mail and Potential Loss to Future Archives and Scholarship or The Dog That Didn’t Bark,” available at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_9/lukesh/index.html and my own “Searching for Authority: Archivists and Electronic Records in the New World in the Fin-de-Siecle” at http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_1/cox/index.html.

This discussion about electronic journals should make us pause as to why no professional records association has moved to make its journal electronic or, at the least, why no publisher has placed articles (even if selective) from its older issues on the Web. None of these associations would lose anything, and they probably have more to gain. Let’s consider one example. The Society of American Archivists has published the American Archivist since 1938, its first sixty years as a quarterly journal and the last two years as a semi-annual publication. Long recognized as one of the premier journals in the field, the American Archivist has in recent years struggled to attract an adequate number of submissions and to remain on some kind of publication schedule. While the Society now provides tables of contents and article abstracts for recent issues of the journal, one might wonder what positive impacts would occur if the American Archivist was published electronically or if the full content of the journal was made available on the Web in a delayed fashion (the content of the previous issue being placed online as a new print issue appeared). Since most people receiving the journal receive it as a membership benefit, it is doubtful that doing this would have a negative impact on membership (people join professional associations for different reasons than to receive publications). Indeed, it is possible that providing the American Archivist in an online version would stimulate interest in it. If the Society moved to producing it entirely electronically, it would allow the journal to publish more quickly and to publish a wider range of materials (incorporating visual and audio-visual sources). At the least, doing this would help the profession to grapple with its continuing problems with how it perceives, uses, and contributes to its own professional literature (Cox, 1996).