Abstract
In July 1999 the Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema (RKMS) was
approved by its academic and industry steering group. The RKMS has inherited
elements from and built on many other metadata standards associated with
information management. It has also contributed to the development of
subsequent sector specific recordkeeping metadata sets. The importance of the
RKMS as a framework for mapping or reading other sets and also as a
standardised set of metadata available for adoption in diverse implementation
environments is now emerging. This paper explores the context of the
Australian SPIRT1 Recordkeeping Metadata Project, and the
conceptual models developed by the SPIRT Research Team as a framework for
standardising and defining Recordkeeping Metadata. It then introduces the
elements of the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Schema and explores its
functionality, before discussing implementation issues and future directions.
Metadata has existed in record systems throughout time. But it is only now that the recordkeeping community has begun the process of the codification of recordkeeping metadata so it can be fully understood and deployed both within and beyond our own profession. Metadata, which can be generically defined as 'structured data about data', is simply a new term for the type of information that has always been captured in records and archives systems – indeed records managers and archivists are metadata experts. Traditional archival finding aids, index cards, file covers, file registers, the headers and footers on paper documents and their computerised equivalents are rich in metadata that helps recordkeepers to identify, describe, authenticate, manage and provide access to records.
Within the context of various metadata related initiatives in Australia and elsewhere, the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata project was envisaged to build a framework in which other sector specific metadata standards could be developed for targeted application. The major deliverable of the eighteen month Research Project, Recordkeeping Metadata Standards for Managing and Accessing Information Resources in Networked Environments Over Time for Government, Commerce, Social and Cultural Purposes is the Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema (RKMS), a high level extensible framework for specifying, standardising and mapping recordkeeping metadata2 . The project was administered by Monash University on behalf of a collaborative group of researchers and industry partners. The collaboration involved Monash University, the University of New South Wales, and a consortium of industry partners – the National Archives of Australia, the New South Wales State Records Authority, the Queensland State Archives, the Australian Council of Archives and the Records Management Association of Australia. 3
In response to the policy directions announced in late1997 as part of the Australian Government's Investing for Growth strategy4 , a range of initiatives has been taken to support and encourage individuals and organisations to transact business electronically. They include initiatives relating to the establishment and accessibility of online government services and call centres, e.g. the Australian federal government's Government Online5 and Business Entry Point (BEP) 6 , and related projects in the state jurisdictions like Connect.nsw, the New South Wales State Government's Internet Strategy7 . Information resource management initiatives are addressing challenges relating to dealing interoperably at the global level with facilitating resource description and discovery. They are also concerned with the transaction of Australian government business, e.g. the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata initiative8 , whole-of-government directories like Ausinfo's GOLD – Government Online Directory (based on the X500 Directory Structure Standard) – and Ausinfo's web based Functional Index of Federal Government9 .
The thrust of government online initiatives is towards fully enabled online transactions as a significant component of service delivery. The Electronic Transactions Bill 199910 is a model law which potentially provides the regulatory framework for the use of electronic communications in transactions (defined broadly to encompass all of the activities of government agencies in their roles as service providers). In the environment envisaged by the Bill, services will need to be documented and instances of service delivery will need to be recorded. They will need to be clearly linked to what the agencies responsible for the services are mandated to do (what functions, activities, and transactions they are responsible for carrying out). The concerns of the national online service communities, which are closely linked to issues of client confidence, include the need for harmony, interoperability, improved access in global networked environments to services and service delivery points; and reliable, authoritative, trustworthy information about services.
To support an enterprise's business functions and activities in cyberspace, and to ensure the persistence and continuing accessibility of records of those activities that are of long term value to society, innovative, reliable and robust mechanisms are required to enable the continuing reliability and accessibility of essential evidence of business activities. Electronic recordkeeping and archival systems provide such mechanisms. They are fundamentally concerned with identifying, describing and classifying the functions, activities and transactions that records document. This can be contrasted with the fundamental concern with subject classification in library and information systems. Records document actions, not subjects – they record what an organisation does – its business transactions, the business activities of which they are a part, the business functions the activities carry out, and the broader societal purposes they fulfil. Linking records to the functions, activities and transactions they document and the agents involved is fundamental to establishing:
The recordkeeping community in Australia has been vitally concerned with the quality of public and corporate recordkeeping in electronic environments, recordkeeping-related issues concerning the reliability, accessibility and accountability of online activities and services, and the persistence and accessibility of records of continuing value to society. Major problems in electronic recordkeeping have been linked to the lack of controls, frameworks and standards in this rapidly evolving area. The response has been a proactive, innovative approach to the research and development role, epitomised in the involvement of the industry partners in the SPIRT 1998-99 Research Project.
The broader social context of the project relates to enabling society, government, commerce and individuals to continually access the information they need to conduct their business, protect their rights and entitlements, and securely trace the trail of responsibility and action. Maintaining authentic, reliable and useable evidence of transactions has significant social and cultural implications as records are a bastion of democratic and cultural accountability. They enable democratic rights of review and examination, and the transmission of our cultural heritage.
The overriding purpose of the Research Project was to develop metadata management regimes that would support organisational, social and cultural needs for:
A significant factor in the shaping of the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Project was recognition that managing records effectively in distributed networks involves ensuring that recordkeeping metadata regimes are compatible with the metadata development framework initiatives in the broader information management community, in particular the Dublin Core (DC) 12 and Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) 13 initiatives.
The main deliverables of the project are:
The methodology adopted is outlined in the table below. In relation to the metamodelling aspect of the methodology, this was not used to produce implementation models but to highlight inconsistencies and gaps in the set, enable precise description of the RKMS, rigorous structuring and specification of relationships to other metadata sets and to provide a graphical means of communicating the RKMS. This metamodelling utilised the Resource Description Framework (RDF) 14 and Object Role Modelling (ORM) 15 .
Project Methodology
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For the purposes of the project Recordkeeping Metadata was defined to include all standardised information that identifies, authenticates, describes, manages and makes accessible through time and space documents created in the context of social and business activity. Traditionally some of this metadata has been captured in recordkeeping systems and some in archival control systems16 . And some of it has been present in the physical form, ordering, juxtaposition and location of records. Increasingly recordkeeping metadata is also captured in workflow, document management and knowledge management systems, and it is essential to make what was before evident in the physicality of the record explicit in metadata.
This concept of recordkeeping metadata is related to the way description is defined in Australian records continuum thinking17 . Records continuum approaches are based on establishing an integrated regime of management processes for the whole of the records existence. Description is therefore defined as recordkeeping processes that capture and inextricably link authoritative metadata to documents created in the context of social and business activity from the time of their creation and throughout their life span. The primary aim is to provide the intellectual controls that enable reliable, authentic, meaningful and accessible records to be carried forward through time within and beyond organisational boundaries for as long as they are needed for the multiple purposes they serve.
The Australian Series System was another key aspect of the conceptual frame of reference for the project. The series system unravels the concept of provenance into relationships between entities which create, own and control records over time and the synchronic and diachronic relationships which exist between records providing for the re-creation of those relationship patterns at any point of time18 .
The SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Schema has been developed as a framework standard with reference to other metadata standards emerging in Australia and overseas to ensure compatibility, as far as practicable, between related resource management tools, including:
The main objective of AGLS is to improve the visibility, accessibility and interoperability of government information and services through the provision of standardised Web-based resource descriptions which enable users to locate the information or service that they require. At the conception of the AGLS schema it was recognised that a high proportion of information resources described or required online to support Internet based government services and transactions would be records, i.e. that in many cases AGLS metadata would be assigned to government records. Thus the metadata defined in the AGLS schema went beyond that required for the bibliographic description of information resources as defined in the Dublin Core. It was also recognised that the prime purpose of assigning AGLS metadata, namely enabling resource discovery and resource retrieval by authorised users, is also one of the requirements of a recordkeeping system. The SPIRT Recordkeeping Team therefore sees AGLS metadata as essentially a subset of any standardised metadata set specified for recordkeeping purposes.
The project involved extensive analysis of the business, organisational and social contexts of recordkeeping, national and international standards which specify recordkeeping requirements, and iterative mapping of existing generic and recordkeeping specific metadata schemata.
Analyses and mapping of the recordkeeping metadata requirements of the following recordkeeping standards and specifications were undertaken:
To provide a conceptual mapping of the Recordkeeping Metadata Schema against other generic and recordkeeping specific metadata sets a range of crosswalks (mappings) were prepared. 24
The Research Team developed three high level models (Figures 1, 2 and 3) to provide the framework for standardising and defining recordkeeping metadata25 . The models and brief explanations of them appear below.
People do business with each other. In the course of doing business, they create and manage records. The records created in the course of doing business capture the business done in documentary form. Business is here defined in the very broadest sense to encompass social and organisational activity of all kinds.
Optimally recordkeeping forms an integral part of any business activity
People do business in social and organisational contexts that are governed by external mandates (e.g. social mores, laws, regulations, standards and best practice codes) and internal mandates (e.g. policies, administrative instructions, delegations, authorities). Mandates establish who is responsible for what, and govern social and organisational activity, including the creation of full and accurate records. Authentic records of social and organisational activity provide evidence of that activity and function as corporate and collective memory. They also provide authoritative sources of value added information. And they account for the execution of the mandate – internally and externally, currently and over time.
With reference to these high level conceptual models, the RKMS is presented diagrammatically below (see Figure 4) as essentially concerned with three classes of entities – Business entities, People entities and Records entities, as well as with the external and internal mandates which are associated with Business, People and Records entities and govern the relationships between them. Furthermore, Business-Recordkeeping entities form a sub-class of the Business entity class.
The RKMS envisions description and management of records, agents and business at different layers of aggregation. A taxonomy of layers has been defined.
For the Business entity class these layers are:
For the Business-Recordkeeping entity class (a sub-set of the Business entity class) they are:
For the Agent entity class they are:
The Records entity class is described in these layers of aggregation:
All these entities and their complex inter-relationships require unique identifiers and standardised descriptive metadata.
A highly structured set of elements and qualifiers has been defined (note that only the elements are represented in Figure 5). The view of the Schema provided in Figure 5 presents the elements in four sub-sets. This view is derived from the conceptualisation of records in their business context as depicted in Figures 1-3 above. The RKMS inherits part of the Australian Government Locator Service set and extends it to address the sector specific needs of recordkeeping.
The elements and qualifiers defined in the Recordkeeping Metadata Schema identify and describe significant features of the business contexts in which records are created, managed and used. They identify and describe the people or agents involved, and the records themselves. They also link business contexts to the people or agents doing the business and the records that document it, and they reference the mandates that authorise and control business activity. They enable description and management of recordkeeping business functions, activities and transactions that are concerned with recording, managing and enabling the use of records, e.g. transactions and activities relating to the recordkeeping functions of appraisal, control, preservation, retrieval, access and use of records. They also provide for the tracking and documenting of the recordkeeping business itself in the unique metadata elements associated here with the Records entity (APPRAISAL, CONTROL, PRESERVATION, RETRIEVAL, ACCESS, USE and EVENT HISTORY)
A significant feature of this high level set of metadata is that it is scalable, i.e. when it is implemented it can apply to records at any level of aggregation, to business and recordkeeping business activities ranging from an individual transaction to the societal purpose it ultimately serves, and to agents acting at any level in organisational and social hierarchies. An Entity "switch" has therefore been included in the set. In any particular instance the Entity Switch indicates whether a Business, Recordkeeping Business, Agent or Records entity is being described. Within each entity, the CATEGORY TYPE element then functions as a handshake, introducing the specific type of entity being identified and described:
The RKMS enables relationships to be set up between the layers of agent, business and record in addition to relationships within the layers and within the entities themselves. Any single record may have relationships which extend through layers of aggregation in ways which establish a rich envelope of contextual metadata. (Figure 6) The RELATION element enables the expression of these complex, multiple relationships.
This complexity in relationships and their fundamental importance in defining the records context has been pushing beyond the requirements of other information resource metadata sets. While the conceptual understandings of relationships is well developed, issues to do with the taxonomy of relationships, the precision of the depiction of relationships and the metadata expression of such relationships is a fruitful area for future research.
As mentioned above, the RKMS is made up of a set of highly structured metadata elements and qualifiers. Each element is repeatable. The qualifiers allow for a more detailed recordkeeping description, providing the facility to refine the semantics of the RKMS and to add precision to the values of the metadata elements. The RKMS has adopted the DC/AGLS application of three types of qualifiers: 26
The metadata community is only beginning to explore the complexity of the relationships between schemata which govern and control metadata elements and values. An exciting area for further research relates to the development of metadata regimes to identify and describe these schemata and their interrelationships. 27
The RKMS envisages use of metadata elements, element qualifiers and value components from other metadata sets. Within individual elements, it is possible to extend the RKMS specification by referencing other schemata, e.g. the Pittsburgh Business Acceptable Communications28 Structure layer metadata elements and qualifiers could be used to extend the Records: PRESERVATION and Records: RETRIEVAL elements. Indeed the RKMS could inherit a full range of metadata elements, qualifiers, value components and prescribed schemes from another metadata schema for one of its entities.
The RKMS also envisages inheritance of the data values from another schema. Particularly when specifying metadata associated with agents and business, it does not seek to create separate recordkeeping views of these entities. Rather it enables reference to metadata sets defined in other circumstances. For example, at its broadest level, we may wish to define an organisation. There are many ways to do this, but one way of identifying a commercial organisation is by its Australian Company Number defined and managed by the Australian Securities Commission. The Recordkeeping Metadata Schema can encompass the specification of a company ACN as an identifier, by explicitly pointing off to the ASC as the originator of the metadata set. Similarly, inheritance of business classification from charts of accounts, activity based costing analyses or the like is logical. The RKMS also provides for the definition and an external validation of authority for such inherited sets.
One significant component of the research activity undertaken during the project has been an in-depth analysis of existing records and archives metadata schemata and standards. This was accompanied by the conceptual mapping of their elements in various combinations, followed, as the project advanced, by mapping the various iterations of the Schema against these related sets. The mapping processes which informed the development of the RKMS metadata set itself, point to one of its major uses - as a framework in which other sets, targeted for application in specific sectors, can be developed and mapped. For example, the National Archives of Australia's Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for Commonwealth Agencies, released in June 199929 was developed within this framework and can be mapped against the more comprehensive RKMS. Equivalences and correspondence can thus be made between it and other metadata sets, each one being read against the standardised metadata framework provided by the SPIRT Schema. The capacity for semantic interoperability of specific implementations of metadata when mapped against a standard set is one of the resulting benefits for the recordkeeping community, nationally and internationally.
The RKMS as presented in this paper is modelled conceptually. As yet no implementation models have been attempted, although the metamodelling in RDF will enable the expression of the metadata in XML and its use for information resource description and discovery purposes as well as the description of agencies and services. 30 Indeed the Schema is implementation neutral. It does not define any technological restrictions on how its elements are to be incorporated into systems. It does not presume any particular software architecture. It does not specify where, when or how metadata will be captured. The concern over time is that wherever, whenever and however metadata is captured, it will remain persistently linked to the record. Although metadata standards per se cannot guarantee such persistent associations, they can clearly demonstrate that assuring such persistence is an implementation imperative.
Implementors of the RKMS are enabled to identify and exploit a variety of technologies to populate the RKMS element fields. In a typical workplace, we may find document management systems mandated to control the creation and dissemination of document level records, personnel systems mandated to map employees, their positions and their levels of authority, and workflow systems mapping information flows associated with business processes. Each of these aspects of seemingly disparate technologies are relevant to capturing specific metadata needed to produce reliable and authentic records over time.
In documenting a business transaction, we need to know who enacted it, in what capacity and with what authority. We need to know the application technologies which undertake the transaction, the form of the transaction, the software and hardware dependencies of the data which make up the transaction, the business rules which govern how the transaction is effected. In addition we need to know what documented the transaction, which specific document (email, memo, instruction or procedure), at what time and created with what software dependencies.
The tendency in present records systems is to identify by user supplied tagging a variety of these data elements which are then incorporated as contextual metadata around a document located in, or linked to, the records system. The metadata is thus brought into the purview of the records system. Such a response is appropriate where the risks of using parallel technologies to persistently associate metadata with the record are judged to be too great. It is a common records-centric solution - if we cannot trust other systems to be sustainable over time, metadata cannot be merely associated with the record via pointers or links, but must be brought explicitly within the confines of the records system itself. This is the approach taken by the Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS) project, amongst others. VERS defines metadata for specific levels of records aggregation, as well as specifying agent and business metadata to be associated with the record itself. 31 Elements of the RKMS defined within the Records entity enable just such an approach. But whether this is the preferred solution depends on the circumstances of the implementation.
Within current document and records management systems, one of the known weak points is in the user-defined tags, as users resist their completion. While a variety of tags may be automatically attributed, a significant proportion cannot. An alternative approach would be to overlay the production systems with mechanisms to grab the document as it transacts business (perhaps as it is communicated beyond specified work group boundaries). Such mechanisms would associate the record with metadata from the document management system and any workflow or knowledge management systems engaged in the business process, as well as with data from the personnel system documenting the creator. This associated metadata would include system descriptions and dependencies. The associations between the record and its contextual metadata may be made by direct links into the nominated systems, by creation of metadata around the record floating in robust formats lodged as discrete items into a storage location, or by embedding the metadata within the record32 . As a possible means of 'future-proofing' records, these latter approaches appeal to recordkeepers, especially as the complexity of managing associations and links to disparate systems over time is, and may prove to be, an unsustainable burden for current technologies and the organisations that support them.
We are still a long way from some of the alternative approaches outlined above, but such imaginings begin to empower recordkeepers to connect with the newly emerging computer paradigms of component programming and non-proprietary, process specific program functionality. What we need to achieve are records which contain or are associated with all requisite metadata (from wherever it may be found), which are sustainable over time and over distributed network spaces. Alternative implementation strategies like this are envisioned by the RKMS, which looks ultimately to the concept of self-managing objects.
The Recordkeeping Metadata Schema encompasses more than documenting the immediate circumstances of creation. In implementing the Schema, organisations can determine the extent of the reach of their systems. If, for example, the records are only of relevance to a discrete organisational group, located within one area, the metadata may be minimal, as we can assume that those needing to interpret the metadata and the record will possess implicit knowledge of where they are in the organisational context. If a record's reach is beyond the organisation - as increasingly more documents are in distributed networks, with transactions enabled on the web via documentary carriers - then additional metadata which specifies these organisational parameters would need to be available to a wider audience to facilitate interpretation. The RKMS envisages scalable definitions of reach to be identified and configured into individual implementations through its layers of aggregation of organisation, business and record.
Such elements can then be tailored to instance specific implementations within organisations and metadata appropriate to the reach of the system can be derived from the Schema. Defining the reach and the comprehensiveness of specific implementations will clarify for organisations the extent to which some or all of the elements are introduced and the ways in which the records created by business need to be 'bound' with metadata.
The RKMS uses recordkeeping understandings to make explicit connections between business, people who do business and the records which occur as a result of doing that business. It embraces traditional articulations of recordkeeping and enables future articulations. Much of the metadata work undertaken so far in electronic networked environments has been based on a passive notion of document-like information objects. The records and archives metadata community in Australia takes a different perspective in relation to records, regarding them as active participants in business processes and technologies rather than passive objects to be described retrospectively. Envisaging records as potentially self-managing information objects that act as the transactors of business has informed the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Research Project. This vision links the dynamic world of business activity to the passive world of information resource in cyberspace.
But as the SPIRT Project was reaching its conclusion the Research Team quickly realised that it was not the beginning of the end but rather the end of the beginning. Work is now proceeding on related research deliverables, including further modelling33 of the set in RDF and ORM, the development of a User Guide to the Schema, and a prototype recordkeeping system that deploys the RKMS. The joint Australian Council of Archives/ Australian Society of Archivists Committee on Descriptive Standards has endorsed the SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Scheme as a framework for the Committee's future work on the development of domain specific recordkeeping metadata and archival descriptive standards34 . The Research Team is also exploring with an international partner an implementation Case Study which would test the applicability of the RKMS in a different national context. A number of compelling areas for further research work have been identified including the development of typologies of relationships and better ways of depicting and expressing them. The need for continuing input into research and development in the broader metadata community has also been clearly identified, particularly in relation to the mapping, description and deployment of metadata schemata.
The RKMS is a tool for all players concerned with authoritative and reliable documentation that provides richly contextualised evidence of business transactions in electronic environments and manages its meaning and accessibility through time and space for as long as it is of value to our organisations and society.
We acknowledge the contribution of other Research Team members and associates, particularly Kate Cumming, Australian Postgraduate Award(I) scholarship holder, Dr Nigel Ward and Dr Linda Bird, Distributed Systems Technology Centre, and Geoff Acland-Bell (for the expert rendering of the conceptual models). We also acknowledge the input of members of the Project Steering Committee and our Expert Reference Group of Australian and international reviewers.
1 The acronym SPIRT derives from the name
of the Research Grant which funded the Project, Strategic Partnership with
Industry – Research & Training (SPIRT) Support Grant, which provides for joint funding by the Australian Research Council and the
Industry partners.
2 The term "Schema" (plural schemata) is used to mean
the semantic and structural definition of the metadata used to describe
recordkeeping entities. A schema describes the names of metadata elements,
how they are structured, their meaning and so on. The metadata community also
refers to metadata schemata as metadata sets or specifications.
3 The Project Chief Investigators were Sue McKemmish, Monash
University, and Ann Pederson, University of New South Wales, with Industry
Partner Chief Investigator Steve Stuckey of the National Archives of
Australia. For background information on the project, see Sue McKemmish,
Adrian Cunningham and Dagmar Parer, 'Metadata Mania: Use of Metadata for
Electronic Recordkeeping and Online Resource Discovery' in Place, Interface
and Cyberspace: Archives at the Edge, Proceedings of the 1998 Conference of
the Australian Society of Archivists, Fremantle 6-8 August 1998. Canberra.
Australian Society of Archivists. 1999, pp129-144; and Sue McKemmish and
Glenda Acland. 'Accessing Essential Evidence on the Web: Towards an
Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Standard.' Paper for AusWeb99 Conference.
Available at: http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw99/papers/mckemmish.
For details of project outcomes, visit the project web site at http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg/research/spirt/index.html.
4 Information on the Investing for Growth strategy can be found
at: http://www.dist.gov.au/growth/html/infoage.html.
5 Information on Government Online can be found at: http://www.ogit.gov.au/gol/gol.html.
6 Information on Business Entry Point can be found at : http://www.business.gov.au.
7 Information on the NSW Government Internet strategy can be
found at: http://www.nsw.gov.au/connect.nsw.
8 Information on the Australian Government Locator Service can
be found at: http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls.
9 For details of the Functional Index of Federal Government see http://www.fedgov.au.
10 For further information see: http://law.gov.au/ecommerce/interim3.html.
11 Sue McKemmish and Glenda Acland. 'Accessing Essential
Evidence on the Web: Towards an Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Standard.'
op cit
12 For details of Dublin Core (DC) see http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls.
13 For details of the Australian Government Locator Service
(AGLS) see .
14 The Resource Description Framework (RDF) was developed by
the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to provide the foundation for metadata
interoperability across different resource description communities. One of
the major obstacles facing the resource description community is the
multiplicity of incompatible standards for metadata syntax and schema
definition languages. For further details on RDF see: http://www.w3.org/RDF. RDF was chosen as one
of the metamodelling tools because it provides a framework for sharing
metadata vocabularies across different metadata communities. The
metamodelling work reported in this paper has been funded in part by the
Co-operative Research Centre Program through the Department of Industry,
Science & Tourism of the Commonwealth Government of Australia.
15 Object Role Modelling (ORM) takes a conceptual modelling
approach that views the world in terms of objects and the roles they play. It
is very expressive, enabling a high level of detail and rigorous analysis,
and can be populated with data instances which thus allows for grounded
validation.
16 Sue McKemmish and Dagmar Parer. 'Towards Frameworks for
Standardising Recordkeeping Metadata.' Archives and Manuscripts, vol 26 no1
1998, pp24-45.
17 For more information on the concept of description in
continuum thinking as developed by the Records Continuum Research Group at
Monash University see http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg.
See also, Frank Upward, 'Structuring the Records Continuum Part One:
Post-custodial principles and properties' Archives and Manuscripts, Vol. 24,
No. 2, Nov 1996, pp. 268-285, and 'Structuring the Records Continuum Part
Two: Structuration Theory and Recordkeeping' Archives and Manuscripts, Vol.
25, No. 1, May 1997, pp. 10-35.
18 For more information about the Australian Series System,
see the following papers, published in The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and
Australian Archives first fifty years, edited by Sue McKemmish and Michael
Piggott, Ancora Press in association with Australian Archives, Clayton,
1994:Mark Wagland & Russell Kelly, 'The Series System – A Revolution in
Archival Control', pp. 131-149. Chris Hurley, 'The Australian (Series)
System: An Exposition', pp. 150-172. Sue McKemmish, 'Are Records Ever
Actual?' pp. 187-203. See also Terry Cook's articulation of the significance
of the Australian series system in Terry Cook 'Archives in the Post-Custodial
World: Interaction of archival theory and practice since the publication of
the Dutch Manual in 1898,' Paper delivered at the XIII International Congress
on Archives, Beijing, 1996, pp.17-18
19 Information on the Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for
Commonwealth Agencies can be found at: http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/techpub/rkms/intro.htm.
20 Standards Australia, AS4390-1996, Australian Standard:
Records Management. For details of availability see http://www.standards.org.au .
21 The Standard can be accessed via http://jitc-emh.army.mil/recmgt/dod50152.doc .
22 'The Functional Requirements for Evidence in Recordkeeping'
can be found at: http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~nhprc/prog1.html.
23 The University of British Columbia project and its outcomes
are described at http://www.slais.udc.ca/users/duranti.
24 The RKMS was mapped against the Australian Government
Locator Service (http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/agls),
the Business Acceptable Communications Model developed at the University of
Pittsburgh (http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~hhprc/meta96.html),
the international archival descriptive standards, ISAD(G) and ISAAR (http://data1.archives.ca/cgi-bin/ica?04_e),
EAD (http://lcweb.loc.gov/ead), the
National Archives of Australia's Recordkeeping Metadata Standard for
Commonwealth Agencies (http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/techpub/rkms/intro.html),
the proposed revision of Dublin Core (derived from David Bearman, Eric Miller,
Godfrey Rust, Jennifer Trant and Stuart Weibel, 'A Common Model to Support
Interoperable Metadata: Progress report on reconciling metadata requirements
from the Dublin Core and INDECS/DOI Communities.' D-Lib, Vol.5 No.1, January
1999. available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/bearman/01bearman.html),
and Tower's TRIM records management software (http://www.towersoft.com.au/main.htm)
- see also details of the Australian Government's Shared Systems Initiative -
Records & Information Management Solutions at: .http://www.ogit.gov.au/sharedsystems/rm-im.html#Records
Management Shared Systems), the National Archives of Australia's
Commonwealth Records Series system (http://www.naa.gov.au,
the Victorian Electronic Records Strategy (VERS) metadata set (http://home.vicnet.net.au/~provic/vers/final.htm,
and the electronic records templates developed at the University of British
Columbia (http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/index.html)..
25 The Project Team, in developing a simple but high level
framework model for recordkeeping metadata given as Figure 1, used as an
example of effective visual representation the INDECS Community's "Model
for Commerce" in Bearman, Miller, Rust, Trant and Weibel, op cit.
26 Note that the extensive set of qualifiers are not reflected
in Figure 5. For detailed information about the qualifiers specified in the
RKMS, visit the project web site: http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/rcrg/spirt.
'The Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) Manual for Users, Version
1.1: 1999-06-09,' Office of Government Online, National Archives of Australia
provides details of the application of these types of qualifiers - see .
27 Simon Cox has written an excellent discussion paper for the
DC community on issues relating to structure, authority and qualification in
DC. See: http://www.agcrc.csiro.au/projects/3018CO/metatdata/dc-guide.
28 The Business Acceptable Communications model is described
at http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~nhprc/meta96.html.
29 See http://www.naa.gov.au/govserv/techpub/rkms/intro.htm.
30 It should also be noted that the unqualified Records
elements of the set could also be used as a minimalist set of metadata to
extend either the Dublin Core or AGLS set when they are being applied to
records as opposed to other genres of information resource.
31 For more information on the VERS project: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~provic/vers/final.htm.
32 The interactions of the Monash University, Archives and
Records Faculty team (Sue McKemmish, Frank Upward, Barbara Reed and Chris
Hurley) with David Bearman, particularly at the Managing the Records Continuum
intensive workshops in Melbourne and Canberra in June 1996 informed the ideas
presented here.
33 Metamodelling of the RKMS was not used to produce
implementation models but to highlight inconsistencies and gaps in the set,
enable precise description of the RKMS, rigorous structuring and
specification of relationships to other schemes and to provide a graphical
means of communicating the RKMS.
34 The Chair of this Committee has recently approached
Standards Australia with a proposal to develop the SPIRT Recordkeeping
Metadata Schema into a Framework Australian Standard for Recordkeeping
Metadata.
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