Ch04

1.1 The 1980s witnessed radical transformations in the governing systems of many countries. With the emergence of new democracies, whole political systems were replaced, most often with hybrids which combined local visions of governance and models from other countries. Among many factors for change, these events reflect the long evolution of the concept of the citizen's right-to-know which, aided by technological advances that have broken down communication barriers, has redefined principles of governance.

1.2 In North American and Western European countries, the citizen's right-to-know had earlier been formalized in legislation proclaiming the individual's right of access to information created and held by government bodies. The United States' Freedom of Information Act, first passed in 1966, inspired many countries to adopt similar laws. Where access rights were not legislated, regulations were often liberalized to limit the span of possible exemptions to access and as well as the period set for full disclosure.

1.3 This approach was later complemented by the notion of accountability. Governments are now expected to accept responsibility for their actions and for their interventions in the lives of citizens, and to be able to demonstrate (by recourse to accurate records) that they have fulfilled their legislated and legal obligations. This principle has two major philosophical underpinnings: decision-making has to be marked by a clear trail of evidence and government actions have to be executed in an unbiased, efficient manner.

1.4 These two factors have had an impact on the way in which the decision-making process is documented and how this documentation is managed. Information management practices have been considerably revised to address this new environment. The concept of corporate memory, which relates to information needed by institutions at a given time to do their job, requires the implementation of proper information management practices. The goal is to ensure that only relevant information is created and kept, and that systems are developed to manage that information so that it is easily accessible. Sceptics have claimed that access legislation and regulations have had an opposite, "chilling effect," on record creation, and that in fact the record is less candid than it should be.

Privacy concerns

1.5 An unexpected consequence of increasing access rights has been the emerging conflict between principles of open access to information and the protection of personal privacy. Often, rights of access imply intrusions into the personal lives of individuals. This is most common where personal and other information has not been segregated by record creators. These two principles must be balanced to ensure that individuals are not unjustly harmed by disclosure of information and that their rights to privacy are maintained.

1.6 In recent years, this issue has become prominent as records containing extensive personal information have been made public. In many cases, the existence of these records was never intended to be known since they were never meant to be released. A notable example of this is the records of the Stasi, the German Democratic Republic's secret police. Over many years, this agency maintained extensive records on its own citizens. Information about individuals - often provided by friends and family - was collected. The records were then used to monitor the activities of perceived enemies of the government." When the regime collapsed, the records were made available to the individuals who were the subjects of such files. As a result, some East Germans learned first hand about the state's intrusions into their lives, as well as about the role played by some family members and close friends. This situation caused much personal turmoil for the individuals who were the subject of the files, as well as for those who had provided information at a time when such an action was condoned and even encouraged by governing authorities.

1.7 A complicating factor to the upholding of privacy rights are the possibilities for intrusion into individuals' private lives made possible by the manipulation of technology. Capabilities for data-matching in automated systems have resulted in the development, in some countries, of regulations to protect the use and dissemination of personal information and, especially, common personal identifiers or numbers. The European Community has made major strides in this field with the planned adoption of a Directive on Data Protection. These guidelines are intended to provide a common level of data protection among members of the European Community. Given the Community's influence internationally, the guidelines are expected to have a significant impact on the evolution of privacy policies worldwide.

1.8 Currently, many nations are attempting to provide maximum protection of personal information through various initiatives. The concept of the individual's right of ownership over his/her own personal information wherever it is located - is gaining prominence. The extent to which this principle will be respected, however, is hard to predict. In some countries, for instance, studies have been undertaken to develop electronic "smart cards" containing personal data which would be held by individuals and made available to governments only when transactions occur. Such an instrument would impose greater limitations on the use of personal information by governments as, it is estimated, there would only be one major personal database to which officials could gain access but under strict controls. Concurrently, if kept, this database would provide a valuable archival record of government-citizen interaction.

Non-traditional forms of records

1.9 Current initiatives in the field of privacy are just one example of society's uneasiness in the face of technological change. In the case of archives, not only is the "shape" of information being redefined, so are the approaches adopted to manipulate it. The invention of other physical formats for records has provided new ways of creating, controlling, disseminating, and gaining access to information.

1.10 It has taken many decades for archives to confront the problems associated with the widening media field. For years, evolution within that field was relatively slow and predictable. Since textual paper records remained the dominant archival artifact, archives did little to accommodate other media such as documentary art, maps, photographs, and films. Description of records usually focused on textual paper records, with vague mentions of other media. In instances where other forms of records were voluminous, segregation and subsequent description using methods borrowed from other disciplines, such as museology and librarianship, were the norm. Providing effective access to these records was an even lesser concern, which may explain why to this day these records are still predominantly used to illustrate research rather than nourish it.

1.11 Yet, non-textual records had been acquired by archives for decades. During the 1950s, the advent of television and refinements to the printing process which reduced the cost of publishing photographs, increased the use of visual material. Non-textual non-paper archival collections, consequently, grew in size and importance within archives. But it was not until these records started being requested by large groups of researchers that archives had to face the challenges associated with conserving and diffusing nontraditional formats.

1.12 With non-paper records, access is as much a question of technology as of context and content. In the case of audio-visual records, for instance, the variety of available formats requires that archives housing such records provide the specialized equipment to permit access to the information, or continually migrate their holdings forward to the most recent storage formats and technology readers/interpreters. This equipment is not only specialized, but also transitory, as new formats are introduced and the technology is rapidly transformed. The same can be said for photographs and electronically generated information. As a consequence, archives must constantly re-format information, upgrade technology, and sometimes even maintain museums of artifactual equipment. Few archives have the resources to do so.

1.13 Intellectual retrieval practices must also be refined. It has been argued that researchers interested in artistic, photographic, and audio-visual records are item-driven. The focus of their search is a particular event, site, or person. They may also be interested in the record-creating process or history of the medium. For as long as these user groups remained relatively small, it was possible for archives to undertake extensive research to locate the items of interest. In many places, this is no longer possible, however, as other researchers have shown an interest in non-textual archives as key evidential records for the modern era.

The impact of technology

1.14 Recent technological developments will complicate this state of affairs. In the last few decades, the conjecture of technology and information has given birth to new types of documents that are solely in electronic form. Avra Michelson and Jeff Rothenberg have used the term "information technology" to describe the "computing and communications technology used to obtain, store, organize, manipulate, and exchange information. At an earlier time this information would have been recorded on one of the many other physical, paper-based, formats familiar to archives. But given the great flexibility of information technology, creators are steadily moving to an electronic environment.

1.15 The proliferation of this technology has caused an "electronic information revolution" which is transforming the way people do their work and, as David Bearman has stated, is leading to new "practices of communication and to new forms of records. Like the telephone had done earlier in the century, it is redefining the nature of human interaction and imposing new forms of "orality" to social exchanges. Above all, information technology enables the free flow of information between individuals, organizations, countries, and continents.

1.16 These developments have forced archivists to revisit basic principles and practices. Probably the greatest challenge relating to electronic records is the fact that they rarely attain a finite state, as they can constantly be updated, unless archives intervene. The information can also be merged, manipulated, and transformed. Often, electronic records provide evidence of the process more than of the actual transaction.

1.17 Because electronic information is so easily transportable and exchangeable, it has been difficult to incorporate it into existing record keeping systems that were developed for permanent, textual, paper records. Indeed, electronic records in organizations often are placed under the custody of automation professionals while paper records remain with records managers. If this electronic information is to be permanently preserved, archives will have to adopt new strategies that focus more on timely interaction with records creators and possibly the sharing of custodial responsibilities.

1.18 In its current manifestation, electronic information in many ways ressembles the oral transaction. It may be argued that archives are entering a period of "neo-orality" where much of the transaction loses its preciseness and becomes more symbolic of the inter action It consequently will be even more important for archives to determine the criteria by which records ought to be kept. They will also have to place information in context so that researchers understand the information to which they are gaining access. Furthermore, given the plethora of records available to the technology literate, archives have to be able to guide users in the best use of available sources.

1.19 This situation will be compounded as drastic changes occur in the media base of archives. Increasingly, records that were traditionally on various media will be created electronically. Furthermore, some copying devices such as optical discs will allow for the merging of textual and other records. Already "compound" (i.e. multimedia) documents challenge the traditional descriptive practices of archives and force a more global, generic, and contextual approach to the creation of reference tools.

1.20 Technology is also transforming the way in which research is conducted. During the 1960s and 1970s, researchers limited their "computing" work to the preparation of indexes and similar retrieval tools, the conversion of textual material to machine-readable form, as well as the writing and editing of text. Such "end-user computing" was transformed radically with the introduction of personal computers and the greater accessibility to easily manipulated software packages. Added to this are the possibilities presented by hypermedia tools which enable access to records that used to reside on various physical formats.

1.21 Researchers are now able to devise their own search strategies, manipulate information in new ways, and study issues which previously would have been difficult to address due to the quantity and structure of the data. They expect off-site access to a variety of sources which they can manipulate, share, and discuss with colleagues from all over the globe, and transfer to other colleagues who may manipulate that same information for their own research purposes. In doing so, researchers are of course also creating their own records.

1.22 Archives are also confronted by new research approaches. On-line access to bibliographic databases has increased the scope of information-gathering processes. Archives will be pressured to complement this with on-line access to the information itself - an objective that may be impossible to reach for some years. This will require that a careful selection be made of what will be offered through electronic document delivery systems. As a participant in the process, archives will have to be knowledgeable of the permutations of research, which will increasingly be based on electronic information net working. Concurrently, transitory or "legacy" systems will have to be maintained for those users who either cannot use technological tools or do not have access to them.

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