Amelia Winstead has a B.F.A., Magna Cum Laude, from the Mississippi University for Women (1987), and an M.A. from North Carolina State University (May 1989), where she focused on archival management and received a minor in history. She has been a Certified Archivist since August of 1990. She has been employed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History since 1989. Currently, she is an Archivist III within the department's Government Records Division. She began her research into electronic records in 1991. As a member of the department's electronic records project, she was part of a two-member archivist team that completed the appraisal of the electronic records of the Alabama Department of Postsecondary Education. This experience provided the department with the foundation for the development of a strategy for the identification, preservation, and accessibility of archival records stored in an electronic media. The idea that the transactional evidence documented by a record does not rely on its storage media and that the appraisal of records should occur outside of the media has been the focus of her research since the end of the project. Concurrent research and publications of Greg O'Shea, Terry Cook, Terry Eastwood, and David Bearman reinforced this approach to electronic records. The culmination of this research has been the implementation of an appraisal methodology that identifies the context of records creation through the analysis of the functions government performs. Amelia accepted a Bentley Fellowship in July to analyze this methodology and publish the results of her research. She continues to participate in intergovernmental advisory committees, working groups, and task forces that are developing statewide electronic records policies. The Alabama Digital Imaging Plan is one result of this work. She has also written a technical leaflet for government agencies concerning the use of digital imaging technologies for the storage of long-term records.
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16 June 1997