Margaret Hedstrom is an Associate Professor at the School of Information, University of Michigan where she teaches in the areas of archives, electronic records management, and digital preservation. She began working with electronic records in 1979 as the Project Archivist for the Wisconsin Machine-Readable Records Project. This project was the first to examine the nature and extent of electronic records in a state government and to investigate the possibility of collaboration between an archival program and a social science data archives. Upon completion of the project in 1983, Margaret returned to graduate school to complete the requirements for a PhD (in History) and to begin doctoral research on the social impacts of office automation in the 1950s and 1960s. During that period she also wrote a basic manual on archival practice for machine-readable records which was published by the Society of American Archivists in 1984. In 1985, Margaret joined the staff of the New York State Archives as Director of the Special Media Records Project (1985-87). In 1987 she was promoted to Chief of the Bureau of Records Analysis and Disposition (later State Records Advisory Services) and in 1989, she established the Center for Electronic Records. While at the New York State Archives and Records Administration (1985-1995), Margaret was responsible for the Strategic Plan for Managing and Preserving Electronic Records in New York State Government and the Building Partnerships Project which developed policies, new methods of service delivery, training, and consultation for electronic records management and preservation.
In 1995, Margaret joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in part because she became convinced that trying to change organizations from within is a slow and arduous process and that teaching a new generation of archivists and recordkeepers might be a more effective way to achieve change in the profession. She also believes that all of the research needed to advance electronic records can not be carried out effectively in active archival programs. Last June, with support of a grant from the NHPRC, Margaret served as the principal organizer for a conference on Electronic Records Research and Development. Her current research interests include digital preservation strategies, the impact of electronic communications on organizational memory and documentation, and remote access to archival materials. Margaret's interests in participating in this meeting are catching up on recent developments, especially those outside North America, and comparing the conclusions of this conference with the one held in Ann Arbor last June.
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16 June 1997