Liisa Fagerlund is chief of the Archives and Records Management Section of the United Nations, responsible for developing policy and guidelines for the maintenance and retention of Secretariat records including electronic media; improving recordkeeping in the United Nations utilizing information technology; promoting and supporting research use of United Nations Archives consistent with security and authorized access; and participating in strategic information planning organization-wide. The United Nations has implemented records management software for integrating electronic records in office filing systems, including file plans, retention schedules and action tracking. Implementation of the system is carried out by the newly formed Records Information Systems Unit under the leadership of Bridget Sisk, one of two units in the Section which Liisa Fagerlund heads. The other unit is the Archives and Records Centre managed by Marilla Guptil. Issues facing the United Nations include development of a digital archives system, driven partially by Internet distribution of parliamentary documentation, and requiring cooperative development of metadata and authority systems.
Liisa is currently participating with an interagency task force
on document management in the United Nations system, which
includes the identification of standard metadata for electronic
documents which are considered to be records. Metadata elements
identified by the Pittsburgh Project and the Dublin Core were
used as starting points for the project. Liisa was a member of
the United Nations technical panel that produced the ACCIS
Report, Electronic Records Management: Issues and Guidelines, in
1990. She served as facilitator for the NAGARA Advanced
Institute for Government Archivists, "Strategic Planning for
Electronic Records Management," 1989 and 1990. As State
Archivist of Utah from 1983 through 1986, she participated in an
IRM partnership in state government. She was a working group
member for the National Information Systems Task Force in 1982
and 1983.
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16 June 1997