Introduction to Electronic and Digital Records

This course introduces students to the constructed nature of digital objects as bundles of technological affordances as well as meaningful records, using students' own relationships to their digital belongings as a way in to the larger questions of digital record creation and keeping. Records created using a range of technologies are examined through student presentations and class discussions. Management of records is examined in detail as students are introduced to government and business systems as well as means available to private individuals. Students carry out a project to examine their own digital recordkeeping practices, inventorying their digital possessions and their locations and investigating how they can own and manage digital objects that live in the cloud, producing a personal information management plan as the major deliverable for the course. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Objectives of the course include assisting the student to:

1) Understand how digital records exist and function as records (or nonrecords: who gets to decide? and what are digital records anyway?): why people create them and use them as they do in their original functional environment; why people need and keep them; why people allow them to die

2) Understand the implications of both statutory requirements and the technological environment for digital recordkeeping

3) Review major trends in digital records archivy

4) Appreciate and evaluate approaches to problems of media obsolescence

5) Learn how to monitor and anticipate the digital recordkeeping implications of technological change; be familiar with both traditional and emerging digital genres

6) Participate in the identification, acquisition, and management of digital records