Gertrude Long is Archivist of the International Monetary Fund and Chief of that organization's Records Division - a post she has held since 1979. Prior to that she served as the IMF Records Management Officer, and before joining the Fund worked for both the U. S. National Archives and the Office of Management and Budget. In her present capacity, Ms. Long oversees an integrated archives and records program focused on the management and preservation of both paper-based and electronic records. For the past four years she has been involved in a joint undertaking with her organization's IT department to plan and implement document management technology in the IMF. This has included an attempt to assess the degree to which electronic record keeping functional requirements can be met by off-the-shelf document management software, as well as an effort to identify the core set of metadata elements that must be captured in such a system. Current undertakings include conduct of a pilot test to assess the practicality of using SGML as a non-proprietary format for long-term preservation of archival electronic records, and participation in a group tasked with developing a document management strategy and architecture for the IMF which will incorporate electronic record keeping requirements. In the international arena, Ms. Long, as Chairman of the ICA Section of Archivists of International Organizations, commissioned in 1986 the first study of electronic records management and archives in international organizations. She was a member of the ACCIS Technical Panel on Electronic Records Management which produced in 1990 the report Management of Electronic Records: Issues and Guidelines. For the period 1990 through 1992, Ms. Long chaired the ACCIS Working Group
on Electronic Records Management Issues and Standards, which issued at the end of its work the report Strategic Issues for Electronic Records Management: Towards Open Systems Interconnection. Ms. Long served as a member of the ICA Committee on Electronic Records from 1993 to 1997. Currently, as member of an ISCC (which succeeded ACCIS in 1993) Task Force on Document Management, Ms. Long chairs a subgroup tasked with proposing a core set of mandatory metadata elements for use by United Nations organizations in their document management implementations.
Return to Attendee List
16 June 1997