RECORDS MANAGEMENTAND THE WEB

Presented by

Jennifer Wright, Archives and Information Management Team

and

Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig, Electronic Records Division

Smithsonian Institution Archives

August 6, 2009

Goals of the presentation

Introduce the role of Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) as well as its Records Management Services

Describe the Processes and Plans for Website and Web 2.0 Acquisitions and Preservation

Discuss Plans for Communicating About Websites and Web 2.0 with SIA

Answer Questions

SIA’s mission

Appraise, acquire and preserve records documenting the history and activities of the Institution

Offer a range of reference, research, and records services

Create products and services which promote understanding of the Smithsonian and its history

SIA’s authority – SD 501

“All documents created or received by employees of SI in the course of official business are records of the Institution, and none may be disposed of except in accord [with guidelines] established by the Smithsonian Archives.”

Records management services

Help identify what to keep and what to discard Create records disposition schedules Maintain, preserve, and provide access to records Destroy records according to established schedules

Archives and Information Management (AIM) Team specializes in assessing the long-term value of records. Electronic Records Division (ERD) specializes in transferring electronic records and their long-term preservation and accessibility.

What is a record?

Any official recorded information, regardless of medium or characteristics, created, received, and maintained by a Smithsonian museum, office, or employee

Records may be in paper, electronic, photographic, or audiovisual formats and include: Websites Web 2.0 tools and applications (Facebook, Twitter,

YouTube, SharePoint, etc.) Documentation of websites and their development Web traffic statistics (OCIO is responsible for

permanent record)

Appraising website records

Most SI websites will be appraised as permanent records: Full baseline Notify SIA of significant changes or additions

Some web 2.0 applications will be appraised as permanent records and others will be appraised as temporary: Full baseline of most to document that they existed Content will be appraised for unique research value Determine frequency of captures

SIA and electronic records

STRI website in 1995SIA Accession 05-032

STRI website, 1998 from the Internet Archive

CFCH Mekong Lifeways, 2004 SIA Accession 05-175

Past web archiving procedures• Files transferred from OCIO• HTTrack web crawler• Scripts used to create XHTML

preservation files but very manual and time-consuming

Heritrix

• Archival web crawler• Open source• Java• Developed by Internet Archive, National

Library of Norway and National and University Library of Iceland

WARC

WARC – Web ARChive file format Now international standard – ISO

28500:2009 Extension of the ARC format in use

since 1996 Container format

Next steps

Contact SIA when launching a new or significantly revised website, portion of a website, or web 2.0 Due to the fragility of digital records, it is better

to capture websites when they are created, not when they are retired

Contact SIA when retiring a website in case it has not been previously captured

AIM Team will contact each webmaster during the next year to discuss existing websites and web 2.0

AIM and ERD teams work together Ultimate goal is long-term preservation

of and access to official records whether in non-digital or digital formats

Records are appraised based on their content, not the media

Contacts and resources

Jennifer Wright, Archives and Information Management Team, 202-633-5924, wrightjm@si.edu

Lynda Schmitz Fuhrig, Electronic Records Division, 202-633-5917, schmitzfuhrigl@si.edu

Smithsonian Institution Archives website: http://www.siarchives.si.edu