Records Management Ontologies Denise A. D. Bedford Collaborative Expedition Workshop #63 July 18, 2007

Quick Overview Setting the context … What is an ontology? What is information management? What is records management? What would a records management ontology do? What would a records management ontology look like? How do we move forward to address the challenges?

Definitional Issues Purpose and definition of an ontology Tim Berners-Lee Tom Gruber Definition and scoping of information management Many conceptualizations available – lets use AIIMs for the present -- capture, management, storage, delivery/use and preservation of information Definition and scoping of records management - ISO 15489: 2001 which defines records management as.. "The field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records".

Information Management Defined

IM and RM Functions

What would IM and RM Ontologies Do? Think back to Berners-Lee and Grubers definitions – IM and RM ontologies should be able to support at a machine level anything that an IM or RM manager would do, or that a user of information or records would need to do At the simplest and highest level, if we ever expect to realize a semantic web reality for information and records management, we need to have robust conceptualizations of: metadata elements that support IM and RM knowledge sources that support metadata (reference and master data sources) expert knowledge of records and information management business processes Then we need to implement these conceptualizations in an efficient and effective way (leveraging those business rules again)

Metadata Reference Model Find the ontology applications…..

Records Management Reference Model Find the ontology applications…..

Meeting the Challenge The possibilities are tremendous but the challenge is equally great Lets be clear from the outset that the engineers can design and deploy from a good conceptualization but they cannot do that without the conceptualization Records and information managers must be involved in the process at the beginning if it is to succeed - there needs to be an on-going conversation across the two communities – Ontolog is an excellent forum for this conversation and for the development work The conversation must begin, though, in the records and information management communities – AIIM, ARMA, ASIST Question is not whether to begin, but where and when we begin