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The Electronic Records Section has great potential to be a forum for sharing both how we adapt best practices to fit the needs, circumstances, and budgets of our institutions and how we can work with our colleagues who do not specialize in electronic records, but who need to acquire, appraise, and describe digital material. As more collections become hybrid or entirely digital, archivists will need to broaden their electronic records horizons. I believe that in the ERS, we can help each other address the issues of how to accommodate budget constraints while also considering how best to support our colleagues working with electronic records.
Ann is the Digital Archivist at William & Mary and a former history professor. She also served as the chair of the Electronic Resources Committee for the Society of North Carolina Archivists while she finished her Information Science degree. She holds a master’s in Information Science with a concentration in Archives and Records Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a doctorate in African History from the University of Texas at Austin.
Starting my preservation of electronic records career 7 years ago working on a National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Minnesota State Archives I learned quickly that experimentation was part of the game. We can’t let fear keep us from taking practical approaches to working with electronic records. We need to keep moving forward, one step at a time, no matter how small they might seem. Each experiment leads to a “success” or “failure”, which in turn becomes a teachable moment. It is important to share these experiences so we can learn from each other. The Electronic Records Section provides a forum in which to do so through the listserve, the new blog, and meetings and I look forward to facilitating these and other ways to share our experiences, both big and small.
Carol Kussmann is a Digital Preservation Analyst at the University of Minnesota Libraries, a position created to address current and future requirements for long-term preservation of electronic records. In this role, she works with many areas of the Libraries addressing digital preservation requirements for programs including the data repository, journal publishing, and the Minnesota Digital Library. As co-chair of the Electronic Records Task Force, wrapping up its first year, her efforts focused on developing and implementing workflows for ingesting incoming electronic materials that were part of the Archives and Special Collections units. In addition, Carol, as a Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) trainer, works with Minitex to provide digital preservation training in the region. Previously, Carol worked at the Minnesota State Archives where she was also exploring and addressing digital preservation issues.
The electronic record represents a significant problem for our profession. And to some of us in the ERS, it also represents the most interesting problem of the day—or, probably, the most interesting nest of problems. So we inquire: how best to understand, cope, manage, curate, use, and ensure continuity for electronic record of the institutions we serve? We think the problem worth our best critical and creative thought. We are intrigued by changes in communication media and stimulated to develop new technical skills adequate to the new archival task. We enthusiastically read, experiment, test, evaluate, and report back failures and successes to our colleagues. Equally eager to learn what others have discovered, we are proud of the progressive, creative solutions eventually produced through collective efforts. I’d like to join the ERS Steering Committee to help direct this professional progress.
Thank you for your consideration.
Aaron Richardson is University Archivist at Louisiana State University, where he works to document/preserve institutional history. Responsibilities include developing workflows for survey/appraisal, accessioning/ingest, arrangement/description of born-digital University records; additionally, he provides leadership for the LSU Institutional Repository and Digital Services Preservation planning group. Previously, he served as Southeast Regional Archivist for the National Park Service in Atlanta, GA. A life-long Humanities teacher, Aaron holds an MA in Humanities, MA in History and the MLIS.