Electronic Records: Preparing Future Archival Professionals for New and Dynamic Tasks

1. Electronic Records: Preparing Future Archival Professionals for New and Dynamic Tasks Nils Bruebach, Archives School, Marburg

2. Structure of the Presentation • Short overview over programs • Approach and premises • Methods and principles • Curriculum and Modules • Teaching and Research

3. The Programs: • 18-months (six trimester) undergraduate program as part of a three-year‘s education alltogether leading to a diploma (comparable to a bachelor‘s degree) • 12-months (three trimester) postgraduate program as part of a two year‘s education leading to a 2nd level-state-examn

4. The Programs:Postgraduate • Combination of stations in archives and institutions of the public administration • There: First contact with e-records • At the end as part of the exam: Tranfer-project with the result of a 30 to 40 pages dissertation supervised by a professional archivist and one of Archives School´s staff • Time-Frame: 8 months archival and administrative stations, 12 months Marburg, 1 month station at the Federal Archives 3 months transfer-Project

5. The ProgramsUndergraduate • Combination of two stations in two different types of archives (6 months) • Here: 1st contact with e-records • 2 Trimesters studies at a College for Public Administration • 6 Trimesters studies at Marburg • Thesis and exam (6 months)

6. Our Mission: • Training professional archivists that.... • Recognizes archival tasks and have a distinguished avareness of problems • Have a thorough knowledge of archival methods • Can chose from a variety of different strategies • Can judge and decide which methods and strategies to adopt to reach a certain solution or result • Have the scientific skills to ask new questions and develop new solutions in the future

7. Electronic Records: Approach and premises • It is no solution to remodel paper-based record systems 1:1 in an electronic enviroment • The specific functions of records... • Working instrument • Instrument of steering and organizing business processes • Process-generated information... Must be maintained

8. Electronic Records: Approach and premises • These functions should be connected to the new opportunities and comforts in use ICT can offer... • But: technology follows function • Cooperation and standardization instead of isolated solutions • Building strategic partnerships with... • Administration • Records managers • IT- Industry

9. Electronic Records: Approach and premises • Archivists have the single undividable responsibility for both analogue and electronic records • Archival core functions such as appraisal and description remain but change • Access and transperency will become more important • Archivists will remain specialists for long-term access and preservation allthough this is not related to a physical but a logical entity - regardless of the physical and logical structure of the records • Archivists are creators of their own e-records

10. Methods and principles • Functional analysis • Functions of records • Functions of records management systems • System analysis of administrative and business systems • Accessment of organizations and methods of conduct of business using comparative methods • Structure analysis • How are the organizational structure, business methods and types of records related to each other

11. The curriculum and the modules • Aspects of e-records are discussed in any module and class in archival science when they become relevant • Terminology • Records management • Appraisal and acquisition • Description • Access • Archival, Privacy, DP and information laws • Archival Managament • A special module on e-records as a round-up

12. The curriculum and the modules • Criteria of recordness, both analogue and electronic • Workflow-Management, Document-Management, Groupware-concepts, Knowledge-management: their approaches criteria of application to business processes, assessment of existing solutions • Cooperation with IT-Industry

13. The curriculum and the modules • Design and implementation of records management/Recordkeeping Systems both analogue and electronic • Strategies of cooperation between administration and archives • Identifying common interests, possibilities for integrated solutions, but also diversive interests ->the archivist as specialist for organising long-term access and system analysis • Methods criteria and strategies for electronic archiving • Metadata: Myths and reality

14. Undergraduate Level: 256 classroom hours 40 % presentation by lecturer 20 % student´s papers based on literature 20 % field-studies: Analysis of existing solutions in practice 10 % IT-assessment 10 % analysis of research projects and standards Postgraduate Level 192 classroom hours 10 % presentation by lecturer 50 % assessment of existing solutions and IT 30 % student´s papers on literature, standards and research projects 10 % guest-lectures by international experts Teaching Methods

15. Examples • Field-Studies... • Assessment of SIJUS-J and an electronic, partly automized system for transfer and appraisal of juridical case-files • Analysis of the e-record-system of the state chancery of the State of Hesse • Developing a strategy for electronic archiving of digital land-registers and the connected maps

16. Research • Staff participates as researcher or expert in Projects like the developement of ISO 15489 • MOREQ, IRMT, DOMEA, Digitazitation as a tool for access, Online-finding-aids • The Professional Network – Staff participates in the Working Group on E-Records Archiving • Students: From the 28 dissertations finished this year 5 had topics related to the RM and archiving of E-Records