This article discusses the impact of information technology on state archival programs. It argues that the context in which these programs function is critical to understanding and directing them, maintains that the World Wide Web confers enormous benefit on state archives with little expense, finds the direction of current electronic records theory unsatisfactory, and proposes using information technology to succeed and even prosper in an era of anti-government sentiment.
About the author: Roy C. Turnbaugh has been State Archivist of Oregon since 1985. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois. The author would like to thank Bruce Dearstyne and Dan Contrail for their comments on previous drafts of this article.
Information Technology, Records, and State Archives
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Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats.
CHARLES DICKENS, Bleak HouseDIRECTING A STATE ARCHIVES at the end of the twentieth century is like trying to walk across nineteenth-century London in the fog. Odd shapes loom up suddenly, voices are muffled and often unintelligible, other pedestrians bump into you and disappear. Embarking on such a journey demands a level of self-confidence that borders on the foolhardy. Technology is like a stray dog that has joined the archivist in the middle of this journey. Depending on how it's handled, the dog may either inflict a painful bite or, suddenly docile, lead one safely through the city.
ContextThe paradox that surrounds state archives and information technology is this: technology offers state archives the means to perform traditional tasks well, tasks such as appraisal, access and description, and records scheduling; but these traditional tasks seem to lose significance before a new set of tasks that are technological in origin, self-referential, and hard to define. State archives are creations of government. They are established by statute to do certain things. The importance of what they do is given a rough prioritization regularly, every time the state legislature passes a state's budget. The fortunes of state archival programs are affected by a host of factors, many of which are external to the archives and outside its control. These factors may include partisan politics, the state's fiscal condition, the level of interest in the state archives-the list is a long and varied one. The point is that there are few fixed stars by which a state archives can set its course. Programs with slender resources may find it productive to set priorities based on a reasonable expectation of success in performing tasks which contribute to the mission described by statute. These statutory missions are r...
