From America to Australia the Standards in the Field of Archival Science

MARA 200

Rosita FavelaSan Jose State University

Society of American Archivists (SAA)

• The purpose and mission of the Society of American Archivists is to support archives and archivist alike. To promote change and encourage like minded thinking, to relate information regarding the world of the archival profession. The Society of American Archivist strives to become the foremost source of professional communication for American archivists. (SAA, 2013)

• The membership of the SAA serves anyone interested in the archival field, specifically those who are engaged in the study, teaching, or control of records. Though this organization is mostly geared toward professionals and students of archival information, this site is also open to non-professionals. (SAA, 2013)

Society of American Archivists (SAA)

• The Society of American Archivists provides access to:o Research articleso Literature reviews o Case studies o Different perspectives on Library Scienceo International reportso Electronic access to American Archivist Online o SAA newsletterso RSS feed

Digital Curation/Digital Archiving: a View from the National Archives of Australia (NAA)

• Digital curation/digital archiving: a view from the national archives of Australia by Cunningham reviews digital archives presented by the National Archives of Australia (NAA) including the NAA’s digital preservation project, implementing digital archiving methods and a brief argument of the term digital achieves being misused, digital achieves, digital curation, and digital libraries being misused. (Cunningham, 2008)

• The audience Cunningham is trying to address in his publication is the Australian government agencies, Australian auditors and archivists around the world. Mr. Cunningham is addressing these key players because they understand the importance of good records. (Cunningham, 2008)

Digital Curation/Digital Archiving: a View from the National Archives of Australia (NAA)

• The Cunningham publication is a wealth of information on the NAA’s digital Open Archival Information System (OAIS), in both the improvements it could implement such as sorting through the digital information submitted and not becoming a repository of information packages. As well as the clarification it brings for managing digital libraries and the misuse of this project being adopted to all types of digital curators.. (Cunningham, 2008)

My Evaluation of SAA and NAA

• The Society of American Archivists (SAA) is a fantastic resource to the archival field of study. The organization sends updates and provides access to research articles, literature reviews, and information.

• The over all publication of Digital curation/digital archiving: a view from the national archives of Australia by Cunningham could have been outlined better and really should have been two different research papers. The strongest arguments he had were dealing with NAA and the OASIS program. The other argument, which should have been in another publication, was arguing the similarities and differences among the concepts of digital curation, digital archives, and digital libraries. The first half of the paper was spent going over the digital concepts and the second half was going back to the original argument with the OASIS program. It was a good publication; it just should have been outlined better and made into to publications.

References

• Cunningham, A. (2008). Digital curation/digital archiving: a view from the national archives of Australia. American

Archivists, 71. Retrieved from http://archivists.metapress.com/content/

p0h0t68547385507/?

p=e243c345f13a43848c8d318dbfa15508&pi=9

• Society of American Archivists (SAA) retrieved September 20, 2013 from http://www.archivists.org