NHPRC Electronic Records Research Fellowship Program

Advancing the State of Knowledge in Electronic Records

Our Program

The NHPRC Electronic Records Fellowships Program facilitates both basic and applied research regarding all aspects of electronic records, particularly research that furthers institutional objectives and management of electronic records on a scale feasible for repositories at the local, state, or regional levels. Through the development of research tools, funding, mentoring, and symposia, the program supports broad participation in the research process among archival practioners and collaboration between archivists and academics. The Fellow's research products as well as the supporting research infrastructure developed and maintained at UNC-CH promise to have national and international impact on electronic records research and practice.

2007 NHPRC Electronic Records Research Fellowships Symposium

On November 16, 2007, the research fellows will present the results of their research at a symposium to be held at the Wilson Library on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

William Wallach from the Bentley Library at the University of Michigan will discuss the Research Fellowship Program for the Study of Modern Archives (RFPSMA), administered by the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 1983-1998, and Joan Krizack from Northeastern University will speak about the NHPRC Electronic Records Research Fellowships when they were centered in Boston, 2001-2004. Dr. Paul Conway will conclude the symposium with an analysis of the accomplishments of the Fellows and the program from 2004-2006 while it has been hosted at SILS.

We are pleased to announce that our keynote presentation will be given by Reagan Moore and Richard Marciano from the San Diego Supercomputing Center. They will speak on "The Evolution of Data Curation: Towards Policy-driven Collection Management."

Abstract: Preservation can be thought of as communication with the future. We know that the future will use new storage systems, new representation information, and provide new services. Preservation is also the management of communication from the past. We want to make assertions about authenticity, integrity, and chain of custody based on prior management policies. Policy-driven collection management such as the integrated Rule-based Data system (iRODS) addresses both challenges. The iRODS data system implements data curation processes as micro-services that can be migrated to new storage systems over time. iRODS implements management policies as rules that control the execution of the micro-services. The rule system can be updated dynamically, can be tuned to express each community's management policies, and enforces periodic validations of assertions about collection properties.

Reagan Moore is Director of Data Intensive Computing Environmentsgroup at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. He coordinates researchefforts in development of data grids, digital libraries, and preservationenvironments. Developed software systems include the StorageResource Broker data grid and the integrated Rule-Oriented DataSystem. Supported projects include the National Archives and RecordsAdministration Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype, theNational Science Foundation National Science Digital Librarypersistent archive, the California Digital Library DigitalPreservation Repository, and the Worldwide Universities Network datagrid. An ongoing research interest is use of data grid technology toautomate execution of management policies and validatetrustworthiness of repositories.Moore has been at SDSC since its inception in 1986, initially beingresponsible for operating system development. Prior to that he workedas a computational plasma physicist at General Atomics on equilibriumand stability of toroidal fusion devices. He has a Ph.D. in plasmaphysics from the University of California, San Diego, (1978) and aB.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (1967).

Richard Marciano is Director of the Sustainable Archives and LibraryTechnologies (SALT) Laboratory and Lead Scientist in the DICE group (DataIntensive Computing Environments) at the San Diego SupercomputerCenter (SDSC), at theUniversity of California San Diego (UCSD). He is also an AffiliatedProfessor in the Urban Studies and Planning Program in the Division ofSocial Sciences and founding member of the Regional Workbench Consortium(RWBC) at UCSD. The SALT Lab is an interdisciplinary unit focused ondeveloping information technology strategies and conducting research inthe area of digital materials & records collection and preservation.Richard Marciano's interests are with data management, digital archivingand long-term preservation. Current research projects include PAT (Persistent Archives Testbed), eLegacy (preservation of geospatial data), T-RACES (cyberinfrastructure for the humanities), WRAP (preservationworkflows for digital video), informatics for urban planning environments,and the NARA research prototype persistent archives.Marciano holds degrees in Avionics and Electrical Engineering(National School of Civil Aviation, Toulouse, France), M.S. and Ph.D. inComputer Science from the Universityof Iowa, and worked as a Postdoc in Computational Geography.

2006-2007 Fellows

We are pleased to announce the selection of our 2006-2007 cohort.

Daphne Arnaiz-DeLeon, Archives and Historical Services, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives

Global XML Data Model – New Mexico Public Records

Don Chalfant & Kathy Jordan, The Library of Virginia

Developing Processing Practices and Workflows for Electronic Archival Records

Erin O’Meara, University of Oregon Libraries

A Recordkeeping Framework for Social Scientists Conducting Data-Intensive Research

Kari Smith, University of Michigan School of Information

Implications of the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 on Electronic Record Keeping in the Wine and Grape Industries

Resource Center

Please visit our resource center to obtain helpful information on research methodologies and proposal-writing tips and techniques.