Waiting for the Ghost Train: Strategies for Managing Electronic Personal Records Before It Is Too Late

Abstract

Over the past decade there has been a considerable quantity of research and published literature that has tackled the issue of electronic records. Almost all of this work, however, has had a governmental or large organizational focus. In the field of personal records, the challenges posed by electronic records have been largely ignored. This paper considers why so little attention has been paid to the management of personal records in electronic form. It revisits suggestions made by the author in 1994 and considers whether or not those suggestions are still viable in the light of the intervening years of research and implementation experience. The paper argues that the strategies suggested in 1994 are still worth pursuing, but that other strategies can also be explored. The paper concludes by calling upon personal records archivists to confront the challenge of influencing the behavior of personal records creators to help ensure that we can preserve a durable and reliable body of electronic evidence of human endeavor for the benefit of future generations.

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