Canadian General Standards Board. Microfilm and Electronic Images as
Documentary Evidence, Canadian General Standards Board, Ottawa, Canada, October 1993.
Valuable set of guidelines for delineating characteristics necessary for evidentiary
use of microfilmed and electronic records. For electronic images, such characteristics are:
completeness, accuracy, authorization, and maintenance of the capture of such images.
Cox, Richard J. "The Record: Is It Evolving?" The Records and Retrieval Report
10, no. 3 (1994): 1-16.
Reviews the historical use of the term "record" and discusses what is meant by the
term. It also presents the functional requirements for record keeping developed by the University
of Pittsburgh.
Hedstrom, Margaret. "Descriptive Practices for Electronic Records: Deciding What is
Essential and Imagining What is Possible." Unpublished. Montreal, Canada, September
1992. Association of Canadian Archivists
Hedstrom's paper provides an excellent summary of the recent thinking by
electronic records archivists on the concept of a record. She argues that the following are the
relevant characteristics of records: 1) mandates, functions, and activities leading to their creation,
2) circumstances of creation, and 3) organizational framework of creation and use. The author
argues that current descriptive practices of archivists have focused on data structures and content
rather than the essential contextual information. She then considers, in detail, the essential and
specific aspects of electronic records needed for descriptive purposes.
Information Technology Standards Working Group -- United States National Archives and
Records Administration. Functional Requirements Covering the Information Life-Cycle
to Meet Records Management and Archival Needs,
DRAFT - 4/92
(Abstract provided).
This paper describes generically those essential capabilities required of any
automated information system (i.e., the functional requirements) in order to satisfy statutory and
regulatory requirements for the creation, management, and disposition of records of Federal
agencies. This paper represents a consensus statement from NARA's Information Technology
Standards Working Group.
Morelli, Jeffrey D. "Defining Electronic Records: a Terminology Problem... or
Something More." Electronic Information Resources and Historians: European
Perspectives, Eds. Seamus Ross, and Edward Higgs, 83-91. The British Academy, London,
25 June 1926. St Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, 1993.
(Abstract provided).
This paper was originally conceived as a discussion of the important differences in
terminology between Information Technology (IT) specialists and others with an interest in
records, e.g. Records Managers, Archivists and Historians. However, in developing these ideas
it became apparent that much more fundamental issues needed drawing out, issues concerning
the very existence of 'records' in an electronic environment.
Sanders, Robert L. "Record, Pre-record, Non-record?" Records Management
Quarterly 28, no. 3 (July 1994): 52-57.
Sanders begins with the assertion that "for records managers to justify themselves
a role in information management, they must show the unique contributions that their training
and experience in records management can make to the management of non-paper information."
[53] In order to achieve this, the author discusses how records managers should apply records
management principles to non-paper records and pre-record information. In addition, he
addresses their need to assert their abilities to distinguish original record copies requiring
retention whether they be in the form of paper records, non-paper records, or pre-record
information. Finally, the author addresses the relationship of configuration management,
transactional information, and the information life cycle to the concept of the record copy.
Skupsky, Donald S. "Establishing Retention Periods for Electronic Records."
Records Management Quarterly 27, no. 2 (April 1993): 40, 42-43, 49.
General review of legal requirements arguing that some electronic files are records
and others are not. Contends that electronic mail is not a record unless the organization has
determined a process for deciding which e-mail messages are to be considered records, voice
mail is never a record, word-processing files and other drafts are non-records (only the final
version is a record), a set of computer data of accounting and tax information are records due to
IRS regulations, computer back-up tapes and other duplicate computer files are non-records, and
databases and other similar data groups are records. This is a very suspect view at this point, at
least as regards the definition of a record. Skupsky notes that the "computer industry and the
courts refer to all computer information as 'records,'" a view that does not seem to hold true in
the computer and information science literature.
Last Modified: 8/14/96 [kjb]