This morning I attended the second Plenary session which featured United States Archivst, David Ferrerio.
Ferrerio highlighted the challenges that we as practitioners in a digital era face and how the staff at NARA are working through those issues.
Challenges:
– Quantity of digital files
– Numerous file formats
– New technologies competing against old regulations or laws
– Social media use, which combines and amplifies the challenges of quantity and various formats.
NARA has put together an electronic records permanent access project to explore the issue of various file formats. The organization has drafted guidelines for managing social media which asks federal institutions using these forums to question the unique status of the records, do the records reflect the agency’s mission, and does the agency authorize these social media records as authorized communications.
Ferrerio stressed the importance of transparency when preserving digital records, which echoes a familiar song heard throughout the SAA conference this year.
Helen Tibbo president of SAA beat a rather familiar drum of budget cuts, down-sizing and other now ubiquitous “woe is I” archivist swan songs. Pivoting away from current challenges, Tibbo shared her thoughts on digital archives.
She focused on archival education as the solution to the growing digital divide. After the plenary ended, I over-heard an archivist lament, “What good is education is we can’t find jobs???”
I would argue, while yes believing that education is the magic answer that ensures employment, ignoring the changes in the archival field all but ensures you will be left behind and unemployed.
Both addresses left me hopeful that as a new practitioner I will witness and possibly affect changes in the archival profession that will be celebrated at SAA’s 100 anniversary meeting.