CRM and Digital Recordkeeping: How long can the record last? Patricia Galloway School of Information University of Texas-Austin

Which of your office records are digital?  Word-processed documents  Web-published materials  Financials: spreadsheets, etc.  Databases: inventories, etc.

Which of your operational records are digital?  GIS  GPS and other survey instrument data  Finds databases  Statistical analyses  Desktop-published reports  Web-enabled materials, intranet and public  Other? (e.g., 3-D/CAD plots of excavation data)

How long will your firm live?  The sad tale of WPA archaeological records  Historical situatedness of CRM  Evolution, revolution, and demise  Statistics on demise of small businesses

What are your legal responsibilities?  Are you required to keep any records at all? Archaeological records Financial records  Are you required to keep any records in functional form? Archaeological records (probably not) Financial records (maybe so)

How do you want to use your information assets?  Meeting state and Federal requirements digitally (see  Protecting intellectual property  Building information assets for operational support  Repurposing information assets for profit- making uses (see for inspiration)

The need for records management  Functional analysis of activities that generate records: what kind, how often, how many?  Evaluating digital records’ longevity  Creating a schedule for how long each type must be kept / should be kept  Accommodating proprietary software lifecycles

There is no permanent format  How often have you changed software?  Software obsolescence Microsoft’s 5-year rule ESRI’s long-range plans  Realities of so-called “permanent media”: it may stay readable, but what will you read it with? And will you have to break the law to do so?

Preserving digital records  Taking digital objects into the future Emulation Migration  Neutral formats  Metadata  Repository creation and permanence

Getting serious about permanence  National Digital Information Infrastructure  University repositories  Federation of archives and other repositories  Digital libraries  National archaeological GIS coverages?  Archaeological data are—or should be— forever