Standards, Research Studies, and Conference Proceedings. All of these online sources should make one reflect about how records professionals can possibly keep up with all of the information available to them that would be of assistance in managing records from a variety of perspectives. At the least, such online sources, with broad possibilities for contextual information regarding the management of archives and current records, should help records managers think of the potential use by themselves of the World Wide Web. That they are beginning to utilize the Web for such purposes can be seen in the increasing availability of materials on records management standards, research studies, and the rapid posting of conference proceedings for use by others. These three sources are intertwined, often one providing commentary on the others. Conferences are often focused on new standards or provide reports on new research. Increasingly, standards and research studies provide links to the conference proceedings, all providing a much more accessible body of knowledge if one is willing to work at following the threads.

In the old days, conferences were held and sometimes several or even more years might pass before complete or partial proceedings were published. Now many conferences provide conference papers either in advance or shortly after the meeting. An example is the August 1999 Working Meeting of Graduate Archival Educators sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Studies and the Society of American Archivists with funding from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation (http://www2.sis.pitt.edu/~gaeconf/). The theme of the Working Meeting of Graduate Archival Educators was “research in and research about graduate level archival education.” The two major topics addressed were “ (1) to begin to assess how effective graduate level archival programs are in preparing their graduates to work as records professionals and (2) to identify the process and problems associated with establishing research programs within graduate archival education programs.” Papers by educators Terry Eastwood, Anne Gilliland-Swetland, Peter Wosh, Elizabeth Yakel, David Wallace, Sue McKemmish, Eric Ketelaar, Angelika Menne-Haritz, Richard J. Cox, and Terry Cook make up the conference proceedings and are scheduled for publication in a future issue of the American Archivist. The origins of this conference stem from a growing dissatisfaction by some archival educators about the existing mechanism for deliberations about graduate education within existing professional structures like the Society of American Archivists. The growth and increasing maturity of North American graduate programs has outraced the annual reporting session (of two hours endurance) of the Archival Educators Roundtable at the Society of American Archivists and the continuing work of the Society’s Committee on Education and Professional Development. The 1999 conference was the second of such meetings, the first being held in San Diego in 1996. The various papers were made available on the Web before the conference, enabling participants to read them before the official presentations and discussions about them.

Other conferences have used the World Wide Web more aggressively, producing some interesting results. For an intriguing means of providing access to an older conference, with some interest for records professionals, examine "Popular Culture in the Digital Age," the theme of the Camden Technology Conference in 1999, where you watch and listen to some of the panel discussions (http://www.poptech.org/). In the next few years, more and more records and archives conferences might be documented in this fashion, not just in traditional texts or the annoying (to many) PowerPoint slides. This produces a very different kind of record, providing those not in attendance the opportunity to attend the meeting after the fact and to be selective in following their interests or needs. I am sure we will also begin to see more online conferences, combining distance education technologies with the Web, allowing fuller participation. Such uses raise important questions both about how we will evaluate these activities and who will take responsibility to maintain the Web-based documentation. Archivists and records managers do not have a good track record in evaluating their continuing education. Furthermore, one of the greatest challenges relating to the World Wide Web is that of the great volatility in the loss of sites, leading to the annoying problem of links that do not function.

Of course, as I have already mentioned, most professional associations and other groups place information about forthcoming conferences and special meetings online. The quick dissemination of such information along with increasingly sophisticated methods of providing access to previously held conferences should have the potential of building both a stronger knowledge base and professional community for archivists and records managers. Just a short decade ago, archivists and records managers disseminated conference papers and draft research reports via hand or old-fashioned postal delivery. I remember conferences being designed primarily to enable individuals to bring unpublished reports for exchange, and I also remember having filing cabinets loaded with such materials. Now they distribute their work by placing it on the Web or, at worse, by attachments in email messages. While I still maintain one partially filled filing cabinet, I have access via the Web to a much greater array of reports and studies than I have ever had before. Electronic bookmarks have largely replaced the filing cabinet.

The Web has also made possible meetings to focus on research data in order to develop far-reaching professional agendas. The Council of State Historical Records Coordinators (COSHRC), in partnership with the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH), has “undertaken a project to organize and present a National Forum on Archival Continuing Education (NFACE),” with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (http://www.coshrc.org/nface/). The “goals of the Forum were to: Inform these organizations about what educational services and information resources are already available; Encourage collaboration and coordination among providers in developing additional offerings that address gaps in existing educational opportunities, and Improve the accessibility to information resources about best practices in the care of historical records that support these educational efforts, and Develop an action agenda for archival continuing education in the next decade. This agenda will be shared with federal funding agencies, resource allocators, and key stakeholders in archival continuing education.” The NFACE project builds from a 1998 COSHRC report, Where History Begins, providing a profile of both repositories and the individuals working in these repositories. This report suggested that there are professional archivists and manuscript curators, allied professionals with records responsibilities, and people with responsibilities with a minimum of training or education. The conference held in late April 2000 to examine the training needs of this diversity of individuals working in historical records repositories developed an agenda including the establishment of a nationwide clearinghouse of information to support the development, delivery, and accessibility of archival continuing education; pursuing partnerships and cooperation among professional archival organizations and with organizations serving allied professions; creating a “diverse and well-educated next generation of archival leadership”; improving the “quality and accessibility of archival continuing education and information resources” for “grass-roots organizations and the volunteers who work to collect and preserve historical records in community-based organizations,” “individuals from diverse communities or who work with records documenting diversity,” and “allied professionals, including public librarians and museums curators, who bear responsibility for historical records as an adjunct to their primary duties”; improving the “quality and availability of archival continuing education by incorporating effective adult learning methods, leveraging appropriate technologies, and exploring non-traditional approaches to delivery”; providing a “firm foundation for ongoing assessment and analysis of archival continuing education needs by initiating research and evaluation of existing survey data and ensuring the collection of data to support longitudinal analysis”; developing “collaborative approaches to providing archival continuing education on specific topics or issues for which limited or no educational opportunities currently exist”; strengthening “electronic records training by developing collaborative projects in support of the existing NHPRC initiative on electronic records”; developing “collaborative approaches to providing archival continuing education in specific geographic regions particularly west of the Mississippi, in which individuals and repositories are located at great distances from each other and from potential sources of education and assistance”; and identifying “sources for both short-term and sustainable funding for collaborative archival education initiatives.”

While it may seem difficult to disagree with either the purpose or the developing agenda, there is, in fact, plenty of room for just such disagreement. The initial problem is that the aim of reaching everyone somehow responsible for or interested in archival records is too ambitious. Indeed, having such an objective threatens to weaken other critical aims, such as dealing with electronic records or graduate education. The agenda needed to be more strategic, aiming at critical issues and players, or, at the least, it needed to be more incremental, establishing a better sense of priorities. The project, and it’s reports thus far, assumes that all local repositories hold records that should be priorities for national or statewide action, and this is a dubious assumption. It also assumes that archival records are valuable because they are historical records, when in fact more compelling reasons can be found for managing such records, such as accountability and evidence. The primary value of this project may be the considerable data it has gathered, a resource for all those desiring to be able to obtain a picture of the potential scope of archival work in the United States. The best legacy of this effort may be the data it has collected and the means, the Web, that it has used for making the data available. Others will be able to draw on the data for other kinds of studies, teaching, comparing their own programs with general professional trends, and other uses. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the project’s agenda, there is considerable data that can be used for other purposes. Perhaps what is needed is a single Web site bringing together all the data from this and related research projects.

Professional standards have also been strengthened by the emergence of the digital age in two important ways. The nature of the reliance on computers has generated substantial interest in standardizing all elements of records work so that the work can be adapted to or supported by the computer. Also, standards can now be disseminated, debated, discussed, and described extremely quickly via listservs and Web sites. The perfect example of this is the emergence of Encoded Archival Description. The EAD Document Type Definition (DTD) is the standard for encoding archival finding aids using the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), developed to systematize the presentation of archival finding aids, primarily over the Web. Having emerged just in the mid-1990s, EAD is basically supported by a Library of Congress EAD Official Site (http://lcweb.loc.gov/ead/) where the standard is maintained in the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress (LC) in partnership with the Society of American Archivists. This site provides both more background and technical information about EAD than any other site, although it lacks references to other writings or links to exemplar uses of the standard. Additional background information about EAD can be found at the site of the Encoded Archival Description Round Table of the Society of American Archivists ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/ead/). The EAD Round Table provides information on activities of the round table, background information on Encoded Archival Description, technical aspects supporting EAD, and reading lists. Its purpose reads: “The EAD Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists is intended to promote the implementation and use of the EAD.DTD (Encoded Archival Description Document Type Definition) for dissemination of archival information. To this end, we aim to put persons in touch with appropriate information concerning converting existing archival finding aids to EAD format, use of software for markup, parsing, indexing, and document delivery, and the current status of EAD development.” This is a very useful site, especially if one is committed to the notion that EAD is the means to develop access to archival holdings. However, it would be useful if this also contained more links to or references about research and other writings that were more critical in nature, questioning the limits of the effectiveness of EAD. One will have to look elsewhere for more balance. Off of both sites, individuals can find information about subscribing to an EAD listserv.

The value of using the Web for standards dissemination is evident in the Society of American Archivists’ placement of its 1994 Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook, compiled by Vicki Walch, up on its Web site (http://www.archivists.org/catalog/stds99/index.html). This publication provides descriptions of over two hundred “technical standards, conventions, and guidelines used by archivists in describing holdings and repositories.” “Introductions to each chapter discuss the historical development and interrelationships among standards used for particular applications. Detailed entries identify the developer(s) of the standard, describe how and why it is applied in archival practice, supply information on how to obtain copies of the standard, and provide sources for additional information or guidance on its use.” The value of publishing this book online because it provides links to online standards information, including a “list of standards developers, their addresses, links to their World Wide Web Sites when available, and the titles of the standards relevant to archival practice.” What is not evident in this Web publication, and what we need to learn to do when we publish in this fashion, is to provide information about whether there is a process for keeping the publication current. It appears that this publication is frozen at 1994, while it could be updated with new and additional information that has emerged about descriptive standards since then. There are, for example, minimal references reference to EAD, a descriptive standard emerging after its publication, intended to update the publication (but not reflecting any commitment to maintain the publication current).

The World Wide Web is also a great inducement for sharing information about research, of any kind, relating to or affecting the work of records professionals. We have some good examples already on the Web. The Monash University Records Continuum Research Group (RCRG) (http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg/about/index.html) is “looking at methods of analysis which enable records to be controlled at different points in time throughout their lifespan. This includes the way records are represented, used, retrieved and disseminated. The group is also looking into how continuum models apply to information management and data archiving. The Group has three areas of research – metadata control, continuum modeling, and recordkeeping and legal systems.” This is a very useful site for individuals wishing both to understand more completely the continuum concept (an idea that is much more suitable for records management than the traditional life cycle approach) but also for those desiring to comprehend the broader importance of records for modern organizations. The continuum concept is particularly relevant to records managers, and the publications linked to this site are very useful (such as Barbara Reed’s “Capturing Electronic Transactional Evidence: The Future,” (http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg/publications/brermac.html), a paper delivered as the keynote address to the Records Management Association of Australia Conference, “e-Business Transactions: Providing Accountability through Effective Recordkeeping,” Canberra, March 2000. The site includes citations to over forty articles, most of which are provided full-text.

Another important site, also combining research and an action agenda, is that of the International Records ManagementTrust (http://www.irmt.org/). The Trust was “established in 1989 in order to support developing country requirements for managing official government records. Projects evolved and grew in three areas, as summarized below: Country Projects were introduced to support local officials and professionals in managing official records. This includes defining legal and regulatory frameworks; developing organizational structures, including strengthening the national archives’ capacity to regulate the continuum of records management functions and developing and introducing new systems and procedures for managing records and developing professional capacity. Education Projects were conceived as a vehicle for introducing greater awareness of the importance of records and for developing educational modules and materials which could be shared between English speaking countries. It was intended that where desirable, these materials could be adapted to meet the requirements of developing countries with different administrative traditions. The aim in all cases was to ensure that the material was in line with global theory and best practice but relevant to local realities where there were severe constraints on funding and a limited technical and institutional infrastructure. Research Projects were introduced to study the requirements for well-managed records in key areas, such as financial and personnel management, particularly in an environment of rapid technological change. The Trust’s research projects have focused on real problems and the practical solutions required to solve them.” This is the premiere site on records issues in the Third World, but this is also an important site for gaining an understanding about the importance of records for accountability. The IRMT’s reports of workshops and other publications are very important for all records professionals. While the Trust sells many of its publications, it also provides reports, articles, conference proceedings, and other materials directly online via the Web.

Virtually any individual or group seeking to provide more detailed advice on records issues can use the World Wide Web to do so. Cohasset Associates, Inc. (http://www.cohasset.com/) is a management consulting firm, “specializing in the management of hardcopy and electronic records,” especially legal issues. Its site provides links to information on records management and electronic records management, mostly focused on legal aspects. A repository seeking to provide access to its holdings can cross over and make the effort both a matter of access and research and development. A related useful site is Case Reference Repository, a Compendium of cases submitted by both Dockery Associates, LLC and Computer Forensics, Inc. (http://www.finder.com//cases.html). This site's main purpose is to act as a repository to attorneys for late-breaking news on the use of electronic evidence in civil litigation.

The digitization of the U.S. Senator John Heinz’s papers at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, using its support by the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Foundation, Heinz Company Foundation, and the Howard and Vira I. Heinz Endowments, with additional funding from Carnegie Mellon and CLARITECH Corporation, provides critical information on issues of digital preservation, access, and research use (http://heinz1.library.cmu.edu/HELIOS/). For further reading, especially this project’s commitment to research, see Edward A. Galloway and Gabrielle V. Michalek. "The Heinz Electronic Library Interactive On-line System (HELIOS): An Update," The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 9, no. 1 (1998), available at http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v9/n1/gall9n1.html.