IST 547: Electronic Records Management
University at Albany, College of Computing and Information
Department of Information Studies
Spring 2016
M 7:15-10:05pm
Instructor:
Catherine Stollar Peters
Contact Information:
Email: cstollarpeters@gmail.com
Cell phone: (to be used only in emergencies) (512) 573-0081
Office location: TBD
Office Hours:
By appointment as arranged by student and instructor. I am usually available just before and
just after class. If there is not sufficient time to discuss your questions during those times, it is
very easy to set up a time to meet with me during the week or weekend. Either talk to me after
class or email me to setup a meeting.
Course Overview:
This course is an introduction to issues in record keeping in the digital age. In addition to
covering issues related to electronic records management, we will discuss digital curation, web
archiving, personal information management, and managing electronic records in manuscript
repositories.
Course Objectives:
At the end of this class, students should understand:
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Structures of electronic records and levels of representation
Models for understanding records creation, use, disposal, and curation
Implications of authenticity, integrity, reliability, and usability for records in electronic
systems
Issues related to long- and short-term retention of electronic records and strategies for
mitigating those issues
Record keeping strategies for electronic records in a variety of environments including:
corporations, governments, cultural heritage institutions, and personal archives
Course Expectations:
Students are expected to attend almost every class, participate in class discussions, complete
assignments on time, and complete a final class project. This course will largely depend on
student participation in discussions. In order to contribute adequately to class discussions,
students will need to read materials before class. 10% of each student’s grade comes from inclass participation and a failure to contribute to discussions in-class will result in a lowering of
the participation portion of your final grade.
Academic Integrity:
Please consult the undergraduate bulletin for guidance in regards to plagiarism and academic
integrity at www.albany.edu/undergraduate_bulletin/regulations.html. The excerpt below
identifies the importance of academic integrity in the pursuit of learning that we value in this
course.
“As a community of scholars, the University at Albany has a special responsibility to integrity
and truth. By testing, analyzing, and scrutinizing ideas and assumptions, scholarly inquiry
produces the timely and valuable bodies of knowledge that guide and inform important and
significant decisions, policies, and choices. Our duty to be honest, methodical and careful in the
attribution of data and ideas to their sources establishes the foundations of our work.
Misrepresenting or falsifying scholarship undermines the essential trust on which our
community depends. Every member of the community, including both faculty and students,
shares an interest in maintaining academic integrity.”
Textbook:
There is one required textbook for this course:
Franks, Patricia C. (2013). Records and Information Management. Chicago, IL: American Library
Association.
This book is available at the ALA store http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=4244 and on
Amazon.com.
Assignments:
Class Participation (10%)
File Listing Exercise (5%)
File identification exercise (5%)
XML Email File Creation (10%)
Midterm (30%)
Final Project (40%)
File listing exercise (5%) due February 15
You will create a list of electronic files that you have on either removable media (such as a flash
drive) or on your personal computer. We will discuss methods of creating a file listing in class.
File identification exercise (5%) due February 22
I will assign a few files for which you will need to identify the file format. You will need to use a
variety of approaches discussed in class to complete this assignment.
XML homework (10%) due March 7
You will create an XML file written in the Email Account Schema from an example email
provided. In addition to the XML file, you will write a 1-2 page response describing the
difference between an email encoded in the Email Account Schema and an email viewed in
software (such as a web-based interface, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.)
Midterm (30%) due March 21
The midterm for this course will be composed of multiple choice and short answer questions.
Content of the midterm will come from course readings with an emphasis on concepts
discussed in class.
Final project (40%) due May 2
You will have a few options for completing the final project for this course. You must be present
on the final class day to present and watch your classmates present or you will loose 20% of
your earned points for this project.
Option A: Personal Inventory and Preservation Plan
1. Inventory your records. Create a file listing for electronic records. Make sure you
incorporate your paper records into your inventory. How will you survey your paper
records? Is your paper records inventory like your electronic records? How and why?
2. Categorize your records into general series.
3. Using your records categories, find a schedule that would apply to your records. Would
you implement that schedule? Why or why not? Use references from the course
readings to clarify and support your opinions. You may have to adapt a records
retention schedule to meet the needs of personal records.
4. Identify preservation strategies for your records by format.
5. What impact would loss of “permanent” records have on you or your family?
6. How will someone access your personal archive?
7. Now consider traces of your digital self on the Internet. Who controls those traces? Are
they records? What retention policies apply to those traces? Use references from the
course readings to clarify and support your opinions.
Turn in to me by Monday, May 2, 2016:
1. Your detailed answers to the questions above.
2. Your inventory documents. (file listings do not count towards page limits)
3. Your records retention schedule (or a reference to it so I can look at it.)
Total submission (minus any computer generated file listings and record retention schedule)
should be 15-25 pages.
Option B: Archive your email. (Minimum of 100 emails)
1. Create an archive of your email. If the original format is proprietary, create an .mbox
copy of your archive.
2. Determine retention periods for your email.
3. Determine if you will implement a records retention schedule/retention periods on your
email archive. Why or why not? Include references from the readings to justify your
position.
4. Visualize your email using one of the tools we discussed in class. How might you use a
visualization tool to learn about your email corpus? As an appraisal tool? An access tool?
Other reasons?
5. Create an XML file for your email archive. Use the CERP parser, mail2xml, Xena, or the
PeDALS extractor. Explain your process. Do you think this is the most effective way to
preserve your email corpus? Why or why not?
6. Redact a file in the email archive (the redaction can be in the body of the email or as an
attachment.) How did you find the information that needed to be redacted? Will you
keep an original version of the redacted file? Is your process scalable to an email archive
of 50,000 redactions?
7. Are there other ways to archive your email?
Turn in to me by Monday, May 2, 2016:
1. A paper answering the questions above and documenting your process.
2. A screenshot of your visualization(s).
3. Part of the XML file you created (2 pages or so). (You can submit this in Blackboard).
4. The redacted email file or attachment.
Total submission (minus the XML file) should be 15-25 pages.
Option C: Literature Review
Delve further into a topic discussed in class including website archiving, digital forensics in
archives, or archiving and big data. Your paper should be a substantial review of the literature
of your topic and include areas for future research. I expect you to use 10-15 significant
resources in your paper.
Turn in to me by Monday, May 2, 2016.
Total submission should be 15-20 pages.
Assignment weights:
10%
5%
5%
10%
30%
40%
Assignment Weights
Class participation
File listing exercise
File identification exercise
XML homework
Midterm
Final project
Grading scale:
Grade Percent
A
AB+
B
BC+
C
CD+
D
DF
>=93%
>=90% AND
>=87% AND
>=83% AND
>=80% AND
>=77% AND
>=73% AND
>=70% AND
>=67% AND
>=63% AND
>=60% AND
<60%____
<93%
<90%
<87%
<83%
<80%
<77%
<73%
<70%
<67%
<63%
Readings and Assignments (subject to change):
Week 1 (1/25): Introduction to course
No readings
Week 2 (2/1): Overview of issues in electronic records management
Chapter 1 and 3 Records and Information Management
An, Xiaomi. (2003). An Integrated approach to records management. Information Management
Journal July/August (2003) pp. 24–30. (you can skim this article)
Week 3 (2/8): Designing and implementing record keeping systems
Assigned: File listing exercise (5%) (Due 2/15)
Chapter 2 and Chapter 6 of Records and Information Management
Duranti, L. Reliability and authenticity: The Concepts and their Implications, Archivaria 39:1-10.
ISO 15489 (an overview)
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/standards-watch-papers/iso-15489
Week 4 (2/15): Inventories and file formats
Assigned: File identification exercise (5%) (Due 2/22)
Smallwood, Robert. (2013). Managing Electronic Records: Methods, Best Practices, and
Technologies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Chapter 5: Inventorying E-Records
Underwood, W. et al. (2009). Advanced decision support for archival processing of presidential
electronic records: Final scientific and technical report. Georgia Tech. pg. 27-30.
Review the following file format registries tools and compare them:
[REGISTRIES] PRONOM (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/Default.aspx) and UDFR
(http://www.udfr.org/)
[TOOLS] JHOVE (http://jhove.sourceforge.net/) and DROID
(http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/projects-and-work/droid.htm)
File format identification tools and COPTR project
http://coptr.digipres.org/Category:File_Format_Identification
Week 5 (2/22): Inventory, Appraisal, records retention, scheduling and disposal
Chapter 4 and 5 in Records and Information Management
Bailey, Steve. (2008). Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0
World. London: Facet Publishing. Chapter 9: Appraisal, Retention and Destruction.
Week 6 (2/29): Unstructured data I: Email, text messages and documents
Assigned: XML email homework (10%) (Due 3/7)
Prom, Christopher. (2011). Preserving email. DPC Technology Watch Report 11-01, ISSN 20487916, Digital Preservation Coalition 2011. (read to page 21 at minimum.)
Rubens, Paul. (2010). The Importance of Managing Unstructured Data. Server Watch, October
29, 2010 http://www.serverwatch.com/trends/article.php/3910671/The-Importance-ofManaging-Unstructured-Data.htm
Find an article on backing up text messages (such as one of these)
Leswing, Kif. (2013).Total Recall: How to Back Up All the Text Messages on Your iPhone. Wired,
November 5, 2013
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/11/backup-sms-iphone/
Ashenfelder, Mike. (2012). Archiving Cell Phone Text Messages. The Signal: Digital Preservation.
Library of Congress. April 27, 2012
http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/04/archiving-cell-phone-text-messages/
Optional:
CERP
http://siarchives.si.edu/cerp/index.htm (read the CERP overview at
CERP_project_summary_122008_CC.pdf)
Preservation of Electronic Mail Collaboration Initiative (read overview)
EMCAP (http://www.history.ncdcr.gov/SHRAB/ar/emailpreservation/default.htm)
ePADD (Stanford)
https://library.stanford.edu/projects/epadd
EAS (Harvard)
http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/systems/eas/
Week 7 (3/7): Unstructured data II: Web 2.0, websites, art and literature
Chapter 7 in Records and Information Management
Bailey, Steve. (2008). Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0
World. London: Facet Publishing. Chapter 7: The Centralized command and control ethos.
Garfinkle, Simpson. (2009). Finding and archiving the internet footprint, invited paper,
presented at the First Digital Lives Research Conference: Personal Digital Archives for the 21st
Century, London, England, 9--11 February 2009. (http://www.simson.net/webprint.pdf )
Optional:
Marshall, C. and Shipman, F. Attitudes about institutional archiving of social media, in
Proceedings of Archiving 2011, Society for Imaging Science and Technology, May 2011 at
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=147623
Rinehart, R. (2000). The Straw that broke the museum's back? Collecting and preserving digital
media art works for the next century. Switch [Online].
http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v6n1/article_a.htm
Optional (For local flavor):
Lewis, C. Archiving the ephemeral: Processing and preservation problems associated with the
iEAR archives. Museum Computer Network 33rd Annual Meeting. November 2-5, 2005.
No class (3/14)
Week 8 (3/21): Structured data
Midterm
Witt, M., Carlson, J. and Brandt, D. S. (2009). Constructing data curation profiles. International
Journal of Digital Curation. 4(3) pp. 93-103.
http://ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/137/165
R. Arovelius et al. (2010). Management and preservation of scientific records and data. ICA.
(skim this)
Gingrich, L and Morris, B. (2006). Retention and disposition of structured data: the next frontier
for records managers. The Information Management Journal. March/April pp. 30-39
Week 9 (3/28): Digital curation strategies
Chapter 10 in Records and Information Management
Rothenberg, J. Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Information available at:
http://www.clir.org/pubs/archives/ensuring.pdf
Ross, Seamus. (2006). Approaching digital preservation holistically. In Record Keeping in a
Hybrid Environment: Managing the creation, use, preservation and disposal of unpublished
information objects in context. Ed. Alistair Tough and Michael Moss.
Week 10 (4/4): Personal record keeping
Marshall, C. (2008). Rethinking personal digital archiving, Part 1: Four challenges from the field,
in DLib Magazine, vol. 14, no. 3/4. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march08/marshall/03marshallpt1.html
Marshall, C (2008). Rethinking personal digital archiving, Part 2: Implications for services,
applications, and institutions, in D-Lib Magazine, vol. 14, no. 3/4.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march08/marshall/03marshall-pt2.html
Lee, C. A. (2011). And Now the twain shall meet: Exploring the connections between PIM and
archives. I, Digital: Personal Collections in the Digital Era. Chicago, Society of American
Archivists.
Week 11 (4/11): Record keeping in small archives and manuscript archives
Erway, Ricky. (2012). You’ve Got to Walk Before You Can Run: First Steps for Managing BornDigital Content Received on Physical Media. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research.
http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2012/2012-06.pdf.
Cook, Terry. Byte-ing off what you can chew: Electronic records strategies for small archival
institutions:
http://www.aranz.org.nz/Site/publications/papers_online/terry_cook_paper.aspx
AIMS. (2012). Born-digital collections: An Inter-institutional model for
stewardship. White paper. (Read report without appendixes. Read 1 processing plan in
Appendix E).
Optional:
PARADIGM: Workbook on digital private papers http://www.paradigm.ac.uk/workbook/
Week 12 (4/18): Digital Forensics
Lee, Christopher A. (2012). Archival Application of Digital Forensics Methods for Authenticity,
Description and Access Provision. In Proceedings of the International Council on Archives
Congress, Brisbane, Australia, August 20-24, 2012.
Kirschenbaum, M., Ovenden, R. and Redwine. G. (2010). Digital forensics and born-digital
content in cultural heritage collections. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information
Resources http://clir.org/pubs/reports/pub149/pub149.pdf
Week 13 (4/25): Work day
Tool evaluation
Week 14 (5/2): Final project presentations