Conundrum

Saving paper documents. Where do you draw the line?

In Part #1 of our look at archiving paper documents, distributed on January 10, we heard from Debbie Pons, executive assistant to City Clerk Debra Bauchop in Bellflower, CA. She described procedures for handling archiving challenges that are typical of many of local governments.

In Part #2, we hear from June Olson, program director for the Cultural Resource Center for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde of Oregon (http://www.grandronde.org) who deals with illuminating archival challenges.

Located southwest of Portland, OR, the Grand Ronde Confederation represents more than 20 Native American tribes and bands from western Oregon and northern California that were relocated to reservations in the area in the 1850's. The tribes include the Rogue River, Umpqua, Chasta, Kalapuya, Molalla, Salmon River, Tillamook, and Nestucca Indians.

The Grand Ronde Confederation has had a rich history both before and after the appearance of white settlers. Its major events range from glorious accomplishments to great sadnesses and injustices.

The Confederation is constantly looking to add to the understanding of that history for the benefit of tribal members and outsiders, who include many Oregonians wanting a better appreciation for the history of their region.

Initiatives of the Cultural Resource Center include the accumulation of artifacts, photographs, correspondence, legal documents and other paper based records, and the creation of recordings of oral history, Indian legends and rituals that have been passed down through generations. In many cases, the Center is repatriating artifacts and other records that were removed from tribal lands for display at museums around the world.

The biggest challenge for Ms. Olson and her staff at the Center is to accumulate and preserve these records while providing easy access to them for tribal members, students, visitors and a steady stream of scholars and other researchers.

Ms. Olson employs a combination of traditional archiving techniques and document imaging technology (from Laserfiche) to get the job done.

Conventional Solution

"We are literally creating our history as we bring together relics and records from our past," observes Ms. Olson. "When materials were taken away to museums, the focus was usually on the significance of each item by itself. With a letter, for instance, the interest would be on the language and translating it into English.

"Now that these things are being repatriated here, we are more interested in how they fit together to tell the story of a particular time. We save almost everything. We will get rid of things that are not adding to what we know, however.

"We probably wouldn't keep a letter that was illegible. In addition, if we had a grocery list that had no name or date on it, we'd probably get rid of that too. Our chief measuring stick is whether the item has historical significance.

"Before we had Laserfiche, we would simply store what we had in boxes in the attic of our building. Ideally, they would be acid free boxes stored high and kept cool.

"When handling aging archives, we always use rubber gloves to keep the oils from the skin from getting on the item, which might be anything from an old ledger book to a basket. Each item has a life and is going to decay no matter what you do. Our goal is to delay that process as much as possible.

"For fragile materials, museums typically will let researchers look at a book while under supervision and wearing rubber gloves. They will not allow the book to be photocopied because of the damage that could be done with repeated copying. The researcher would then have to take notes in long hand."

21st Century Solution

Ms. Olson and her staff are now scanning images of all their archives into their Laserfiche document imaging system. Eventually, she plans to make everything available on the Internet via Laserfiche WebLink.

"We have to open the written texts to scan each page but we know it is going to happen just once," Ms. Olson says. "After that we basically hope that there will be no need to open that book again.

"We scan old photos and are taking photographs of each artifact so that we can scan them into the system too. We can also archive links to our audio and video tapes in Laserfiche. With good indexing, we are then able to find everything associated with a subject in seconds.

"It is very expensive in terms of staff time, space and preservation measures, including the services of a conservator to examine each item once a year, to maintain cultural archives.

"Document imaging is an investment too. It justifies itself easily, however. It is definitely taking pressure off our efforts to limit human contact with our archives and it is a great help to researchers. Its greatest benefit, however, is its ability to deliver our story to many people all over the world through the Internet. That is a very important goal for our program."

To learn more about maintaining historical archives, please visit these links:

Visit the Grand Ronde site at: www.grandronde.org

Find out why one of the oldest towns in the United States chose to go to document imaging:
http://www.Laserfiche.com/newsroom/01-07-16.html

Check out some of the many Web pages focusing on compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA), including the NAGPRA compliance project of San Francisco State University. http://www.sfsu.edu/~nagpra/

The Memory of the World Programme of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/index_2.html

The National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA) and the link to its electronic document management newsletter, Crossroads:

Society of American Archivists:
http://www.archivists.org/

This newsletter is an open space for you to share your experiences and knowledge. If you have a story about why or why not to keep paper files, or on another subject of concern to municipal officials, let us know. Similarly, if you'd like to suggest a document related conundrum for a future issue, please drop us an e-mail at usernews@Laserfiche.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

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