Margot Note's Blog, page 16

Data Warehouses and Decision Support Systems

Data warehousing is a method via which structured records are available to support business functions. Data warehousing arises out of an organization’s need for dependable, consolidated, unique, and integrated reporting and analysis of its data at different levels of aggregation.

A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data, designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. Retrieval, analysis, extraction, and transformation of data and the management of the data dictionary are indispensable components of a data warehousing system. Data warehousing also includes business intelligence tools, and methods to extract, transform, and load data into the repository, and manage and retrieve associated metadata.

Data warehouses and other applications consist of a data repository, tools for analyzing the data, and a means of presenting the data to users. Decision support systems, whether geographic information systems (GIS), computer modeling systems, or systems that support decision making (such as dashboards that provide constantly updated information to executives about their organizations), also have a body of data analyzed by tools. It provides tailored information in some form of a report, such as a map, graph, or list of problems that need to be addressed. In some cases, the data is duplicative as in a data warehouse, but the data in an organization’s GIS may be the only place where that information is stored.

Business Analysis

Data warehouses contain data extracted from an organization’s operational or transactional databases or other sources and pulled together in one place for analysis. Data flows into a data warehouse and typically includes structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. A data warehouse is a central aggregation of data that starts from analyzing what already exists and how it can be collected and later used. As a repository of organizational information, one question is whether data warehouses contain records or simply information or data. A data warehouse is an information asset by any definition, but to maintain records, it needs to maintain all the overhead necessary to document the records’ authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability. In most cases, which would only slow down the process, which is all stripped away. One can argue that the data are transformed as part of the process and therefore are new and different records, but they do not represent new transactions.

Analysis Tools

A variety of tools can analyze the data. Data mining, for example, seeks to identify hidden relationships using statistical analysis and modeling tools. Data mining might be used to uncover the reasons behind the declining sales of a product or whether the demographics of the customer base are changing. Data mining would be used to look behind the new information about the changing use of email in relationship to text messaging and social media to predict the impact on advertising in the future.

The final part of the data warehouse is the user interface that allows users to query the application and get results. Here, accurate records are created as users get information that they can use to make decisions. Unfortunately, there are few good answers to how one maintains a clear and complete record of the process because one would need the final product, which is comparatively easy to create and preserve, the data used, and the tools employed. Using these applications, users often select what they want to analyze and the form the analysis will take. Not selecting all the right data to analyze, using the wrong tools, and setting the wrong parameters, can all affect the quality of the decisions. Data warehouses can be used in organizations to apply data to help decision-making and allow employees to perform more accurate, substantive, and consistent analysis.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Developing Primary Source Literacy

Primary sources are the raw materials of history. They are documents and objects that were created during the event being studied or created later by the participant of an event, reflecting their viewpoint. They enable researchers to get as close as possible to what happened during a historical event or period.

Primary source literacy is the ability to interrogate evidence, such as documents, images, or objects for credibility, trustworthiness, and accuracy using sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration. Examining primary sources provides a powerful sense of history and demonstrates the complexity of the past. Even more importantly, analyzing primary sources develops better critical thinking and analysis skills.

To understand the significance of a primary source, you must evaluate key characteristics, including the role and perspective of the document creator, the intended purpose, the type of information or opinion conveyed, and the extent of the corroborating or conflicting evidence.

Developing primary source literacy engages four types of queries:

Description: What is this document? What kind of document is it? Who created it? When was it created? Was it personal or public? Are there any attributes (e.g., notarized, postal marks, tears, etc.) that are present?

Relationship: For what purpose was this document created? What is the context from which it emerged? What other documents are related? How is the context in which I am encountering it different from the context in which the creator intended? What is unknown about this document?

Meaning: What sense can I make of this document? Of what does it provide evidence? What interpretive frameworks help to understand this document? Is the meaning contested?

Use: How will I use this document in my work? Does it provide supporting evidence for my claims? Does it provide contrary evidence that I need to engage? What is the appropriate way to cite the document?

Primary sources raise questions that should be answered with sound research. While some answers are better than others, and some answers are wrong, good historical questions do not have a single right answer. The end product of primary source analysis should be a historical interpretation, supported with evidence from the documents, that answers the driving question.

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Check on my favorite books on primary sources:

Records Retention for Archivists

Organizations are expected to keep records that reflect how the organization operates.

How long records are kept is based on compliance with external statutory, regulatory, and legal requirements; internal legal, fiscal, and administrative organizational needs; and standards of practice (both mandatory and voluntary) and identifiable community expectations.

These guidelines provide minimum recommended standards for the retention of certain records. How organizations implement those is based on two interrelated decisions. The first is the continued usefulness of the records to the organization matched against the cost of maintenance, and the second is the risks associated with the maintenance or destruction of those records.

The Ethical Component of Retention

Organizations must manage their records in a manner that enables them to demonstrate that the organization is conducting business with honesty and integrity, consistent with the public interest and their own. They also need to maintain and preserve records in case they are needed as evidence in government investigations, litigation, audits, or other legal proceedings. They also must fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations in letter, spirit, and good faith.

The expectations in the United States, for example, are that organizations manage their records to ensure they are complete, true and accurate, accessible, legible, retained as required, and fully usable. Organizations and their records managers have ethical requirements, and ethical behavior is expected. There are exceptions, but legal compliance is the norm, and organizations and records managers are expected to keep good records.

Assessing Needs

Organizations can destroy records that should be kept based on a misunderstanding of the potential value of the records. Records managers may be the “pitchers” instead of archival “keepers,” but pitching does not equate to evasion. Moreover, conditions change, and public and employee ideas of what makes a complete record may evolve, requiring an organization to rethink its retention strategy.

Retention and disposal take place on two levels. First, there is the disposal of records relating to an activity that is not perceived to be needed to provide a complete, accurate, and true accounting of that activity.

The second level is that of documentation for the activity itself. For example, we all know what documents we need to retain to support our income tax filings. We also are aware that we need to keep our records for seven years. That is the statute of limitations on when the IRS can audit people. People can keep their records longer if they wish, based on other perceived needs (e.g., historical), but seven is the minimum that is considered prudent.

Archival Appraisal Concerns in Scheduling

There are two types of archivists: corporate and collecting. Corporate archivists are employed by an organization to preserve, maintain, and exploit its records for the good of the organization. The collecting archivist collects the records of other individuals and organizations to provide historical, cultural, scientific, and other resources for others to use.

The appraisal decisions of the corporate archivist may be aligned with the retention decisions of the records manager, while the collecting archivist will go beyond the usual retention periods. The assumption is that many of the records that are important for the short-term management of operations will be valuable for the longer-term understanding of how the organization operates and how it might evolve in the future.

The role of the corporate archivist in appraisal may be more to ensure that the records are complete enough to allow for later exploitation of questions like why initiatives succeeded or failed or why leaders were more successful than others. The corporate archivist may have even more in common with the corporate knowledge management (KM) expert. Like the archivist, the KM expert wants to know how and why not for historical purposes but to recreate the success or avoid the failure in as close to real-time as possible. The archivist and the KM expert are interested in what the records contain. Records managers may be interested more in what than how or why. While the records manager will retain records of the activity, they may not include the documents crucial to the interests of the archivist or knowledge manager.

There are also differences in the second level retention decisions: what activities deserve retention.

The focus of both the corporate records manager and archivist is inward. They look to the external world to help understand their organization, not vice versa. On the other hand, the collecting archivist has a broader interest: documenting some aspect of a locality, industry, or cultural phenomenon of which the organization is a part. Records relating to community activities, advertising, dealings with other businesses, and responses to the community may not have had much interest for the records manager or even corporate archivist. However, they may be crucial to the collecting archivist who wants to document the organization’s role in the community and the life of the organization itself.

The different information perspectives offered by records managers, archivists, knowledge management experts, and other affiliated fields provide a broad spectrum to hone records retention decisions and disposition. 

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Inactive Storage of Electronic Records

In the lifecycle of electronic records, inactive storage offers several challenges. One of the strengths of archives and records management in the paper world was that records managers controlled inactive storage.

Since the storage of records in office space was expensive, there was a benefit from a cost perspective in moving inactive records to offsite storage facilities. Furthermore, once the records were in offsite storage, they were under the control of the records management staff, at least in theory. Obviously, this did not always work perfectly, but the structure gave the records manager leverage in managing the records.

Storage Options

The same economics hold in the electronic world: offline storage is cheaper than online. However, in this case, the IT staff controls the storage, and their priorities are different from those of archivists and records managers. IT staff members hold ideas about long-term storage and how to manage it, usually reducing costs by moving data to cheaper storage. What gets moved to cheaper storage is based on usage or predicted usage. For example, if statistics show that most unstructured information is not accessed after 60 days, data older than 60 days is moved to near-line storage. This results in slightly poorer response time, but the user will hardly know the difference when done well.

How does this work? In simple terms, the IT department puts in a stub where the document used to be with the same metadata, so when users look for the document, they see the same information. If users access the data, the stub calls for the actual data, which is in near-line storage, and the document is presented in seconds longer than it would have taken for an online document. Older data would take slightly longer. The exact times for moving data from one level of tiered storage to another can be adjusted, but the premise is to keep the most active data online, the less active data in easily reachable but cheaper storage, and the inactive data reachable on a delay. This widespread practice is often used with email archiving systems to move emails to a central location where they can manage them, reduce duplication of messages, and control deletions.

The Need to Retain

Tiers of access make sense from the IT staff perspective, but archivists and records managers need to work with IT on two issues. First, the lack of access does not equate with a lack of need to retain. Just because records are not accessed does not mean they do not have long-term retentions attached. Using a 60-day guideline to determine what is best kept online and near-line is suitable, but equating use with retention is a fallacy. Second, once offline, records tend to be forgotten. The ongoing role of the archivist and records manager is to make sure that those offline are not forgotten, regular retentions are applied, and records remain useable throughout their lifecycle.

Managing Inactive Electronic Records

Managing inactive electronic records requires cooperation with the IT staff, something not always easy for records managers and archivists to do. The most effective way to develop a good relationship is to understand the concerns of the CIO and IT staff and explain how archives and records management can help IT by using retention and disposition.

Archivists and records managers bring strategies and decisions about retention, disposition, and preservation to the discussion. The IT department has no legal grounds for determining retention or proposing the disposal of records. They can make a cost argument, but records management brings the retention perspective: the argument that records have been assigned a retention period, the organization has agreed to it, and the program manager need not fear that if they agree to disposal, someone will come back and fault them for it later. The only fault will be if they refuse to cooperate in the disposal and the records prove to be a burden later, even if it is only to review them during litigation to verify that they contain nothing that pertains to the litigation. While archivists, records managers, and IT staff have different philosophies and priorities, they can work together to maintain electronic records throughout their lifecycle.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Authenticity, Reliability, Integrity, and Usability

To effectively create and capture records, archivists need to decide on several issues at the organizational or business process level. Of the documentation being created, what needs to be captured as a record?

How will the records of a transaction be linked together and separated from the records of other transactions? In addition, archivists will need to know whether all the records of a specific transaction will be subject to the same management and retention rules and, if not, how different rules will be imposed.

Archivists also consider the authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability of records. Are these concepts absolute, or should they be applied well enough based on business needs and risk? What do these terms mean in the organization? Are these concepts applied at the organizational level, the business process level, the records series level, or the item level?

Recordkeeping Capabilities

The authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability of records depend on the recordkeeping capabilities of the system in which they are created and managed. What requirements should be applied to systems that keep records? Are the requirements the same for all systems, or should they again be applied in a “good enough” fashion, based on business need and risk?

For example, the documentation may consist of emails asking about availability and proposing meeting times, Outlook calendar meeting notices and responses, emails concerning meeting logistics, drafts of the agenda (some circulated and some not), notes and drafts of the meeting itself, comments and corrections to the draft minutes, and the official meeting minutes. An organization with an established archives and records management program should know which documents need to be retained as official meeting documentation and whose responsibility it is to do so.

Everyone agrees that email messages can be records, yet very few have done anything to ensure that they can demonstrate the authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability of their email messages. There are several reasons why. For example, employees are unsure what a record is in email, but they know that not everything is a record, so they do not know how to handle that. In addition, there are few specific requirements to keep email. However, when there are clear and specific requirements, such as those outlined in Sarbanes Oxley, they take steps to meet the requirements.

Individual employees may see rewards in managing email for their use, but most organizations do not see email as an information asset. Everyone understands that managing email will take resources, and without a solid reason to do so, they see no reason for investing. Without specific requirements, many organizations do not see significant risks that necessitate implementing recordkeeping for email. Most organizations assume that the essential transactions are managed officially outside of email or in another system. The one risk people are aware of is discovery, which leads them to keep everything or as little as possible.

In short, email contains records, but its management continues to be uneven and will be until the risks and rewards reach a point where they need to be addressed. Is this sufficient management? In typical records management and archives fashion, one would answer, “It depends.” 

Sufficient Trust

In most organizations, employees have sufficient trust in the authenticity and reliability of their email system that they conduct at least a percentage of their business over it. Many email messages are records of transactions between individuals, not organizations. Agreements that obligate organizations are still managed through paper or systems that have a much greater capability to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the records. Finally, most organizations do not appreciate the wealth of information available in their email system. Those who try to move the useful information to another platform rather than manage it by email.

Records managers and archivists have definitions of authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability, but most organizations consider those legal terms, not archives and records management terms. Authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability are the characteristics of a record. The purpose of archives or records management policies, practices, guidelines, and procedures are to ensure that records should maintain these characteristics as long as necessary. 

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Archival Preservation Options

Digital preservation is a rich area of archival investigation, with several approaches available to archivists.

The first option is to preserve, to some extent, the hardware and software environment in which the records were created. The most common formulation of this approach is emulation. For certain types of records, it is currently the only way to preserve the records’ look, feel, and capabilities in their original application. One variation on this theme is the concept of the computer museum, where old software and hardware are maintained to provide access. Another is to use viewers to access the records, limiting what can be done with the documents but providing access.

Another option is to migrate the records to the next platform. Migration allows the records to be constantly matched to the newest technologies but changes their format, sacrificing the original look and feel of the records and a direct understanding of the native environment’s capabilities. It also questions the authenticity and integrity of the records unless the migration is conducted within a rigorous, well-documented process. A variation on this approach is what Charles Dollar, an expert on digital preservation, refers to as conversion: the moving of documents from one iteration of a software package to the next, such as moving MS Word .doc records to .docx. The amount of change should be minimal, but changes may occur.

A third option is standards-based digital objects, which is the approach behind the Open Archival Information Standard (OAIS) and the work of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Creating open standards allows the preservation of electronic records independent of hardware and software. Variations on this are semi-open standards such as PDF/A.

The last option is hardware/software independent (encapsulated) objects, which is the methodology that lies behind the NARA Electronic Records Archive (ERA) and ERA 2.0 projects. The core idea is to make the digital objects readable across time by making them understandable on their own and accessible across time independent of any platform by encapsulating the object with all the metadata necessary to access and understand the object.

These initiatives are making inroads in the archives and records management community. The variations on this would be the selection of open standards-based objects with the hope that the standards would remain viable over time. At this point, there is no simple solution to preservation. Migration and standards-based digital objects are the most used approaches, with care taken to preserve the authenticity and integrity of the records. Finally, computer output microfilm (COM) and hard copy retention should be considered for long-term inactive retention, especially when there is no hard evidence that there is any demonstrable advantage to maintaining them digitally.

Establishing a Preservation Program

A preservation program needs a common vocabulary so that everyone understands and obtains agreement on the use of terms surrounding the preservation process. Archivists, records managers, and IT staff should agree on what is meant by media refreshment, conversion, and migration.

A program also needs preservation documentation. If archivists want to demonstrate the authenticity and integrity of data during and after preservation, they must carefully document the preservation process, such as the successful recopying, reformatting, conversion, and migration to a new platform. To do that will require an infrastructure of policies regarding preservation, quality control, and security. Finally, archivists should monitor the preservation process continually.

Consider a Mixed Strategy

A preservation program requires policies, procedures, processes, and the right technologies. The recommendation is for a mixed strategy of standards, conversion, migration, conversion to analog, and other tactics based on organizational needs. What is necessary is an understanding of what needs to be preserved and a plan to reach the preservation goals the organization has set. Archivists and records managers must assume that preservation will never be a priority at an organization and that resources, technologies, employee training, and plans will be short of the ideal. However, using a mixed strategy of preservation interventions has the most potential for success in the real world. 

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. Get ...

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

The Minnesota Method Explained

Archivists Mark Greene and Todd Daniels-Howell, who were both employed at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), focused on the role of business records within that large collecting repository, which had state government records and a responsibility to document a geographic area as well as topics.

The project included much preparatory work, including collection analysis, to frame business collecting within a larger scope. However, they also knew they had to get a better grasp of what they already had.

Developing the Method

To tackle this project, they created the Minnesota Method. It includes several steps and draws from previous appraisal models. The first step is defining, analyzing, and surveying, drawing from the organization’s collecting policy. Archivists should define collecting areas, such as geographic, chronological, type of business, or other areas. Next, they should analyze the collection and survey other relevant repository holdings and collection goals.

The second step is determining the documentary universe and consultation, which is informed by documentation strategy. Archivists should survey relevant government records and other documentary sources, and consult with selected subject experts, researchers, creators, or business archivists.

The next step is to prioritize, which pulls from macro-appraisal. Archivists should define their criteria for prioritization. They then concentrate on industrial sectors, individual businesses, geographic regions, or chronological periods into two to five tiers.

The fourth step is to define functions and documentary levels, which comes from functional analysis. Archivists should define functions and information most appropriate to a particular collecting area and documentary levels relating to these functions.

Archivists refine prioritization. By doing so, they refine prioritization within tiers. They then connect documentary levels to priority tiers, such as the practical, operational differences in their approach to top priority companies versus second priority. Finally, they will test the model by applying it to real companies, either those already accessioned or realistic possibilities.

The sixth and final step is updating the collections through collection analysis, research, and consultation. Collections should be updated every three to seven years.

Levels of Collecting

The methodology ties to the levels of collecting. Level A is the highest. It thoroughly documents both internal and external facets of a company and has active solicitation by MHS. It seeks records further down the organizational ladder, to division level in large, decentralized organizations and department level in smaller organizations.

Level B seeks to document internal and external facets, but only at the highest administrative rung—the CEO and Board. Internal factors include decision making, planning internal communication, production facilities, legal, employee training and culture, research and development, and summary accounting. External facets include marketing, community relations, products, stockholders, and financing. Records at Level B are not actively solicited.

Level C offers minimal documentation of internal facets; the focus is more on external aspects. Internal functions are collected at the summary level. Personal associated papers not sought or accepted unless relevant for other reasons. The materials in Level C are not actively solicited.

Level D attempts to preserve minimal evidence of the existence and purpose of a company. Materials may include annual reports, some product information like catalogs, and company histories. Not surprisingly, Level D materials are not actively solicited.

Decision-Making

The question becomes, how did archivists using the Minnesota Method decide what collecting level a particular business falls under? They looked at the geography of the state and divided that into sectors. They also divided the types of business up into sectors and then ranked those sectors into four priorities for collecting. For this project, the priorities included:

Agriculture/Food Products and Services, Health Care, Medical Technology

Associations, Merchandising, Transportation

Entertainment, Sports, Financial Products/Services, Hospitality/Tourism, Lumber/Forest Products, Manufacturing (non-Agricultural), Media, Service

Legal, Mining, Other Technology, Real Estate/Land Development, Utilities

They based those priorities on several factors built into decision points and flow charts to decide on a specific collection. Some elements included if the organization was a top 25 employer, a top 5 regional employer, an industry leader, and representative of their industry. They considered if no other repository had the materials and if the materials were within the cost of retention limits. Other influences included if the collections were offered from the first time from that sector, if the business was minority-owned, and if the business had a state or local identification. Lastly, they considered the corpus of the collection; a complete, exceptional body of records increases the value of a whole.

Applications to Archives

The Minnesota Method is labor-intensive but less political than other documentation strategies. Whether it is a realistic approach to apply to other archives depends on the repository. When the method is applicable, it presents a transparent methodology for making appraisal decisions.

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Archival and Records Management Preservation

Records managers develop retentions and approve disposals to clear unneeded records while at the same time advocating for planned preservation of those records that need to be retained for the long term. 

For records managers, archival means long-term but not necessarily permanent. Records managers may feel that their archival data has long-term continuing value, replacing permanent as a description of archival value in some circles. 

Shared Challenges

Still, archivists and records managers face similar challenges when it comes to the preservation of digital objects. Both recognize that there is no permanent solution to digital preservation and that looking at digital preservation as a series of medium-term solutions is the safest approach. 

The key is to maintain a migration path from one preservation method or platform to the next. Migration paths can take many forms. Media migration ensures an easy way to get records from their current storage medium onto another. Keys to success here are sticking with nonproprietary software and hardware and using only those formats with an established market share so that there will be enough of a market to move from an older storage medium to a new one. 

Long-Term Retention

The same concepts apply to formats for long-term retention as well. To the extent possible, archivists should get the organization to standardize and reduce the number of records requiring long-term retention formats. For example, many organizations are using PDF or PDF/A for long-term retention of unstructured data. PDF is proprietary, and risks are involved in relying on it, but it is so broadly used that it has become a de facto standard, and if there are problems later, there will be plenty of tools to convert PDF to whatever the succeeding format is. 

Software Issues

Software poses the most significant challenge as it complicates preservation tremendously. Even if archivists can only move their organizations to a limited selection of formats, they are much better positioned for long-term retention. Again, the same issues arise the extent to which the software is open, the level of market share, and the degree of compatibility with other software are all questions to consider. The problem is that software is often selected to meet immediate needs. The best archivists can do in most cases is argue for the need for a migration path.

Preservation is Expensive

One key preservation issue is cost. Preservation, no matter what form it takes, costs money. The easiest way to reduce that cost is through a regular disposition program that eliminates the large percentage of the records that do not need to be preserved. The most common preservation approach is simply maintaining everything through recopying, which is cheap. If the records cannot be found or accessed, or understood down the road, IT will say that it has done the best it could. Many IT departments will argue that this approach is sufficient because they can still access older records. The problem with their argument is that records going back to the mid-1980s, most data were maintained centrally using mainframe computers, and important records of an organization were kept on paper. The computing environment has gotten much more complex since then, and those who have looked seriously at the problem that preservation tactics this far will not maintain the accessibility of records into the future.

Special Preservation Challenges

Preservation of some types of digital information poses unique challenges because the records are heavily dependent on the software that produces them. For example, geographic information systems, computer modeling programs, computer games, and other software and records are inseparable pose particular problems. In addition, complexities exist for preserving websites, only one of many types of records that will need special attention for preservation. 

Although archivists and records managers may differ in defining preservation, they share similar challenges and strive to preserve and protect records of enduring value. 

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact

Deciphering Archival Software Solutions

Archivists manage information about their collections with a number of different software solutions, which may have overlapping functionalities. 

Knowing what system or systems to choose for a repository can get confusing, especially when potential users are unclear about their archival needs and software feature options. Three types of systems concern archivists: collections management systems, digital asset management systems, and digital preservation systems. Clarifying system strengths and differences give perspective about what solutions archivists should pursue. 

What “CMS” Do We Mean?

Collections management systems are known by their acronym “CMS.” “CMS” can also denote content management systems, which facilitate creating, organizing, editing, and publishing websites, related web properties, and digital content. Archivists are not concerned with content management systems, which are primarily used by marketing departments. 

Collections Management Systems

A collections management system creates, manages, and shares information about holdings, usually at a group level. It is a collection-oriented system with specialized capabilities used to manage cultural heritage collections from acquisition to outreach. A CMS also specializes in specific collections, such as museum, library, or archival holdings. For example, an archival collections management system can track information regarding provenance, history, location, exhibition, conservation, loans, publications, and other details related to collections. Collections management systems do not typically store digital surrogates of collection items. 

Digital Asset Management Systems

Alternatively, a digital asset management System (or DAMS) organizes, stores, retrieves rich media and manages digital rights and permissions. It stores digitized or born-digital items. Like a CMS, different software is developed for different fields or types of content. Because the holdings are digital objects, DAMS functions at the item level, unlike archival holdings with box, folder, or group levels of description and access. 

Digital Preservation Systems

Lastly, a digital preservation system manages items on a technological level to ensure their long-term accessibility. The functionality of digital preservation systems varies; some focus on a narrow set of tasks, necessitating the use of several tools in a workflow. For example, tools can check the integrity of each file in the system, perform backups, or migrate files to more stable preservation formats. 

Purchasing Considerations

Archivists should invest in systems when they have exhausted their options. For example, for some archives, collections management can be performed through spreadsheets or Access databases. They are not the ideal solution, but for small collections, they can suffice. When working outside of software systems becomes burdensome, research into a solution should begin. Similarly, repositories that need to store electronic files reliably in the interim for a later date may not necessitate expensive systems. Digital asset management or digital preservation systems are ideal for collections that have robust access or preservation needs.

Another common mistake is believing that technology alone will solve organizational issues. Unfortunately, software cannot solve people problems. Systems are most effective at solving challenges caused by the limitations of older technology. They are less helpful when the problem is caused by understaffed or underfunded programs, misaligned priorities, or a general lack of archival best practices.

If an organization lacks a basic inventory of holdings or a full-time staff member devoted to the archives, purchasing software will not solve these problems. Instead, a better investment would be to increase labor within the department and achieve a baseline, box-level inventory of holdings. Then, as information about the collection grows, software can help support workflows. 

Return on Investment

Whenever a repository purchases a system, it should consider its return on investment. What is the archives getting in exchange for its outlay of time, resources, and labor to set up and maintain a system? Regarding quantitative value, an archives should consider the total cost of ownership, such as the CMS purchase, installation, and ongoing maintenance. For qualitative values, the archives should consider how it could benefit from a CMS. Benefits include collections data, such as linear feet processed; financial benefits, such as reducing hours needed to complete outdated, inefficient workflows; and usage statistics, such as increased reference requests. The return on investment, in most cases, is tied to monetary values. However, improved workflows, efficient practices, and a more professional environment are equally important, even if they are not data reliant. 

Making Decisions

Archivists considering what systems they require should first think about the kinds of collections they need to describe and share, the kinds of information they want to capture about their collections, and the most needed functionalities. Only then can they decide what systems are best for them. 

The blog was originally published on Lucidea's blog. 

Get Started

Looking for archival advising, records management, and historical research services? Click below to speak with an expert consultant.

Contact