Literature Selection

I began searching articles from 1970 onward, or from the date of first publication of the journal if that date fell after 1970. The six journals selected were: The American

Archivist, Archivaria, Archival Science, Records Management Journal, Archives and Museum Informatics, and Journal of the Society of Archivists. Because of the variation in abstract availability and full text searching capabilities, several techniques were used to discover the relevant literature.

The American Archivist is available for full-text search through JSTOR’s Data for Research functionality (http://dfr.jstor.org/). Because early versions of this journal do not contain abstracts, I performed searches for literature that contained one (or more) of the following text strings somewhere within the body of the text (including titles):

• Machine-readable

• Automat*25

• Continuum

• Cloud comput*

• Comput*

25 _{The asterisk (*) reflects a “wild card” character, which enables one to search for any potential conclusion to} the term after the asterisk. For example, searching for comput* would bring back search outcomes that include computer, computers, computing, and so forth.

117

• Electronic*

• Digital*

• Encoded archival

• Technolog*

The articles were provided in comma-separated values (CSV) format and I exported them to Excel. I cleansed the data to remove unnecessary columns, merged the separate files that were downloaded, removed duplicates, and sorted the information ascending using Volume, Issue, and First Page as sort criteria. A number of items that occur regularly in this journal were also removed. These included: books reviews, news notes and front- and back matter, technical notes, bibliographies, abstracts of foreign periodicals, SAA committee and meeting notes, and errata. What remained were research articles and letters to the editor. I allowed the latter to remain on the grounds that in this journal these letters frequently represent researcher viewpoints and thus can provide a variety of opinions about materials related to technology. After the download, cleansing, and removal of unnecessary

components, 1,029 articles remained for further review. I was aware that a number of these articles may contain one or more of the above mentioned words and yet still be irrelevant for the purposes of this study. (For example, if the word “digital” were to occur prior to the beginning of the article to indicate that a digital copyright is held, the article may contain that word and yet represent a topic entirely unrelated to technology or technological change in the ARM profession.) Because of this, I manually skimmed these articles individually to

determine which were relevant and which were not. 156 articles were found to be relevant. After this initial review, I examined the remaining 156 articles to classify them based on the following factors:

• Whether they discuss archivists or records managers (or both);

• Whether records management is the main topic of the article;

• Whether ARM functions are discussed;

• Whether roles and responsibilities are discussed; and if so, whether they discuss roles and responsibilities or functions as being archival, RIM, or records management- oriented, or conjoined;

• Whether computer technology or its effects on ARM occupation(s) are discussed;

• Whether the article discusses its primary topic in relation to the operation or mission of an archival- or of a non-archival organization.

I conducted a similar search on the content of Records Management Journal, using the same keywords and criteria: 54 articles were determined to be relevant. Likewise, I conducted a similar search on the content of the Journal of the Society of Archivists, resulting in 42 relevant articles from that journal.

Archivaria and Archival Science both contain online abstracts. These were manually reviewed to determine the relevancy of the articles to the subject at hand. The first

assessment made was to verify that the content type was, in fact, a research article. Some content types were excluded by their nature: book reviews, editorials, communications regarding meetings and society formations, submission instructions for authors, issues introductions, lists of contributors, and author indices, as well as volume tables of contents. The next assessment was to examine the abstract to determine relevancy, using the criterion given below. If the article proved immediately to be irrelevant on the basis of that criterion, it was categorized simply as “no.” If it appeared immediately relevant or potentially relevant on this basis, it was tracked in an Excel spreadsheet that contained fields showing: online

identifier (if available), the content type (i.e., book review, research article, letter to editor, etc.), the subject-matter category (e.g., technological, professional identity, recordkeeping, etc.), author, journal title, article title, and keywords, where available. Categories allotted to the articles were “technology,” “professional identity,” “nature of the archives,”

“recordkeeping,” “business archives,” “archival education,” “digital convergence,” and “organizational culture.” During the process of categorization I examined more deeply the articles that were categorized as “technology,” “professional identity,” “nature of the archives,” “recordkeeping,” and “archival education.” 270 relevant articles were found in Archivaria and 114 were found in Archival Science.

I also assessed the individual articles in the journal Archives and Museum Informatics for information relevant to the impacts of technological change on archives and records management, however, this proved to be somewhat of a conundrum. Virtually all of the articles in this journal were related to technology in some way. However, the vast majority of articles focused on technical reviews and how-tos, in contrast to research or theoretical exposition on recordkeeping or professional identity, education or roles in the face of changing technology. Ultimately, after a detailed review, 46 were found to be relevant.

Thus, in total, I compiled 682 articles from these six journals for further assessment and review. The documentary analysis conducted used techniques to identify themes as reported by Ryan and Bernard (2003). I used five eight techniques of analysis described by these authors: repetition, or “topics that occur and reoccur” (89); “indigenous typologies,” which are the equivalent of Glaser and Strauss’s in vivo coding; deduction of themes from metaphors and analogies presented by authors; examination of similarities and differences between different texts that discuss the same topic; and searches for missing data by asking

of the articles, “What is missing?” (92). By engaging in detailed examination of the texts I was able to develop a representation, or story, of the roles and responsibilities of archivists and records managers from the framework of the academic literature. This representation was used as a proxy for perceptions of various strands26 of archival thought and when compared to the results of the interviews and the various states’ documentation, allowed me to compare the academic portrayal of ARM roles and responsibilities to the “real-world” roles of

recordkeeping stewards as perceived by the stewards themselves.

26 _{For example, sample “strands” are “post-custodial,” “continuum theory,” or “life cycle theory.”}

121