Taking A Byte Out Of History

Historical Information Science is an extensive review and bibliographic essay, backed by almost 6,000 citations, detailing developments in information technology since the advent of personal computers and the convergence of several social science and humanities disciplines in historical computing. Its focus is on the access, preservation, and analysis of historical information (primarily in electronic form) and the relationships between new methodology and instructional media, techniques, and research trends in library special collections, digital libraries, data archives, and museums.

In these pathbreaking essays, Roy Rosenzweig charts the impact of new media on teaching, researching, preserving, presenting, and understanding history. Negotiating between the "cyberenthusiasts" who champion technological breakthroughs and the "digital skeptics" who fear the end of traditional humanistic scholarship, Rosenzweig re-envisions the practices and professional rites of academic historians while analyzing and advocating for the achievements of amateur historians. While he addresses the perils of "doing history" online, Rosenzweig eloquently identifies the promises of digital work, detailing innovative strategies for powerful searches in primary and secondary sources, the increased opportunities for dialogue and debate, and, most of all, the unprecedented access afforded by the Internet. Rosenzweig draws attention to the opening up of the historical record to new voices, the availability of documents and narratives to new audiences, and the attractions of digital technologies for new and diverse practitioners. Though he celebrates digital history's democratizing influences, Rosenzweig also argues that the future of the past in this digital age can only be ensured through the active resistance to efforts by corporations to control access and profit from the Web.

A collection of news and feature articles from the Bureau's public website.

The importance of records in modern society is explored by re-examining some of the historical antecedents for critical functions in the modern records professions. The motivation for writing this book comes from a conviction of the importance of records and records professionals in organizations and society, as well as the need to possess a stronger sense of the events, trends, people, debates, and controversies producing the modern records professions. Archivists and records managers have tended to discount the importance of their historical antecedents, ignoring the fact that many of the current debates and issues before the profession are not new but embedded in the historical evolution of the records professions. Re-examining some of the historical origins helps records professionals to re-examine their mission to manage records for the benefit of organizations and of all of society. Such re-evaluation also helps to remind records professionals and others that the concerns generated by new electronic recordkeeping technologies are not new at all but built deep within the fabric of traditional records creation and administration.

This book helps readers understand the current status of archivists in the United States. It addresses issues of professionalization by re-examining two major aspects of the archival community: institutional forms and structures, and the basic educational foundations that are important to any profession. While United States archivists now seem poised to develop new approaches to the management of electronic records, including research and education venues, this profession?s long journey to reach this point is an interesting step on the continuing road to professionalization. The First Generation of Electronic Records Archivists in the United States represents the first major study of how and why American archivists have struggled to contend with the management of electronic records. The book provides a framework for studying this issue, includes suggestions for additional research, and serves as a basis for discussion about the continued strengthening of the archival profession. Despite more than thirty years of striving to manage electronic records, American archivists have not developed an effective infrastructure for this purpose. The First Generation of Electronic Records Archivists in the United States considers the evidence for this failure by evaluating archival literature on the topic of electronic records management. It examines how position descriptions in state government archives and job advertisements across the discipline have reflected a bias toward paper-based formats, and the failure of graduate and continuing archival education programs to deal effectively with electronic records. The book details: state government archives and position descriptions trends and practices in the Information Age, 1976--1990 graduate archival education and electronic records: an analysis of current approaches and their strengths and weaknesses the effectiveness of the NAGARA Institute as a form of advanced archival education problems, challenges, opportunities, and needs for additional research The First Generation of Electronic Records Archivists in the United States is an enlightening study for library and information science educators, archival graduate students, and archivists themselves as they work toward the professionalization of their field.