Guest speaker: Jason Baron, Director of Litigation, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Knowing how to appraise and manage electronic information and digital objects depends on understanding the purpose, value, and uses for the information. Traditionally, records have served well-defined purposes in organizations and their status as a record has been obvious from their appearance, location, name, or structure. In the electronic environment, different factors define what is and what is not a record and how it should be maintained. Using two recent highly influential court cases -- Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President (also known as the PROFs case) and Public Citizen v. Carlin (also known as the GRS20 case) -- we will reconstruct the arguments and logic used to determine when email is an official record and how it should be preserved.
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<www.archives.gov/records_management/policy_and_guidance/report_to_archivist_0998.html>
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