China-US Next Generation Archives Seminar Held in Renmin University

20^th October 2011 China-US Seminar The Next Generation Archives: Digital Records and Strategic Partnerships in an Era of Change was held in Renmin University,which was jointly given by SAAC, RUC and Bentley Historical Library of UM. The conference theme focus on The Next Generation Archives: Digital Records and Strategic Partnerships in an Era of Change on which nine experts from China and US reported. The attendence included Francis X Blouin Jr, director of the Bently historical Library at UM, with whom the UM delegation visited, SAAC leaders as well as numerous experts in archives study.

Yang Jibo, deputy director general of SAAC , and Feng Huiling, vice president of RUC, made important speech at the opening.

Zhao Guojun, dean of SIRM was the host at the opening ceremony.Yang Jibo, deputy director general of SAAC, presented warm welcome to the attendece in the name of SAAC during his lecture.He emphasized that both countries accumulated some experience and lessons of electronic record managing, which brings significance for understanding and exploring electronic record management model and development stratagy of each other. Furthermore, long term preservation as well as effective access are becoming the major part of national archive course, whose goal is managing new types of archives for future use. He believes that China and US colleagues will find a solution to the new problem through cooperation and joint endeavor. Yang expressed his gratefulness to SIRM of RUC, the seminar organizer, and its contribution to cultivated abundant archival researches and talents.

After that, Feng Huiling, vice president of RUC , lectured on behalf of RUC as well as SIRM, expressing her warm welcome and thankfulness to the attendece, especially for the friendship between RUC and UM. In her speech, she pointed out an interesting topic of new generation, on which spreads various meaning from different aspects like management orientation, management approach and management function. The new generation archives she pointed out is that digitalized management objects as well as automatic management methods of which we archivists can hardly avoid or give up but actively response.

Then turned to Francis Blouin’s opening speech. As director of the Bentley Library he has done extensive work in understanding archives in an international context. He showed his Sincere welcome to Sino-US deep communication. In his speech, that Bentley Library though be called a library however holds archives of UM was stated briefly, additionally archives should cooperate with law department and public administration department in oder to maintain its historic value. Besides, with the promotion of computer science, record amount increased rapidly therefore new exploration should be done to these challenges. 

The conference then came to keynote speech session. Mr. Blouin gave the report  The Importance of Strategic Partnership in the Digital Transformation of Archives during which he introduced UM history and then compared paper file to electronic record so that he underlined the challenges ER brought about and how archival course transfer to a digital condition.Consequently, Mr. Blouin elaborate clearly to rethink the orientation of the library of UM and relate it to other campus activities.

Nancy Ruth Barlett, Chief Archivist and Assistant Directior for acdeminc and international programs of Bentley Historical Library at UM, was the second to gave her lecture The Challenge of  Change in a Culture of Chioce :Adapting and Enhancing the Role of an Academic Archive. Her report points out that technology, organization structure and conception are affecting new generation archives. She paid particular attention to records preservation continuum and the connection between paper archives and electronic archives. Only by sepcifying archives reqiuments, build up special community and powerful policy can archivists succeed.

Professor Zhang Bin, deputy dean of SIRM, RUC, gave a report Facing the Next Generation Archives: Missions and Reforms of Archival Education in the Information Age. He put out the missions of archival education by comparing Chinese, English, Russian and Japanese archivist reqiurement. Firstly, training knowledge manager with archival professional knowledge and skills. Secondly, promoting archival researches and structuring new archival system whose core is electronic record management. Lastly, enhancing archival theories and practice on which Mr. Zhang exemplified with SIRM at RUC.

After the coffee break, Lara McCain Patterson, Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer at UM, lectured on Planning for the Next Generation Digital Archives. Her report focused on building up new tech platform after UM 19 schools’ agreement to meet social and technology changes. At the same time, the platform has to satisfy security needs as well as outside communication.

Then Jiang Wei, Director of information Center of Beijing Foreign Affairs Office, brought his speech on Visual Knowledge Discovery at the Digital Age. Based on the Data Mining project of Global City–Beijing’s Development Strategy in Period of Post-Olympic, this lecture analysed and studied the concepts , elements , processes and difficulties of the knowledge discovery of the digital archives. This study provided an intuitive visual case to study the developmrnt and usage of digital files.

At the end of session one, participants had a heated discussion. Professor. Ding Haibing asked about the email records collection of UM while Professor An Xiaomi put a question on international standard of electronic records management.

Wu Hongda, Director of the International Cooperation Department SAAC, was the chair of Session two. Nancy Ruth Barlett did theme report for Nancy Deromedi who was unable to attend the meeting. The report stressed the new communication method–social media like Facebook,Twitter and Utube that challenged new generation archives. Therefor todays’ talk focused on the vision for thr digital curation of next generation archives at the Bentley Historical Library,UM.

Soon afterwards, Yu Ling, assitant director of chongqing university archives, reported Practice and Conception of Digital Archives Construction of Chongqing University. She firstly made a brief introduction to the project approval, planning and implementation process of Chongqing University digital archives construction which shows the spirit of archive people seizing chance and gaining supports to promote the development of archival information. During making clear the information of digital archives construction practice from the perspective of basic environment, management, digital archive resource and security, the report emphasized the revolution in collection, management, utilization and storage which reflects the comprehensive development of Chongqing University digital archives construction. In the end, the report provided the development plan in the future.

Michael Bulington, senior manager for McDonald’s Corporation, gave a theme report The Secret Ingredient ?Information Technology in Corporate Archives. He pointed out that McDonald’s Golden Archives Mission is that it serves as the centralized information and research center for the historical assets of McDonald’s Corporation. The Archives will acquire, preserve and provide information to maintain the integrity of brand McDonald’s and support current and future business activities. What’s more, he put up some frustrations and challenges that corporate archives face.

The last reporter Wang Lan, deputy director of the supervision department on economic, scientific and technological records SSAC, lectured The Introduction of Assets Concept and Its Effect on Business Records Management in China. The presentation focused on business records management development based on concept changing in enterprise and business sector of China. First part, Transformation of electronic system and its effects on records management, gives three main effects to understand the reason we reach such a new consensus on business records management. The second part, exploration based on new concepts and technology, shows some practice in recent years in national business records administration. The third part, examples of business records management in China, introduces some cases of business records management approaches.

Afterwards the discussion part was even more heated than the morning’s. They talked about the conception of electronic record long term preservation and changes of archivists’ responsibilities, etc.

On the closing ceremony, a short video was presented reviewing the whole day’s process. Professor. Wang Jian sing highly praise of the seminar and thanked all the attendance as well as the volunteers whose thoughtful service contribute a lot to the conference.

The seminar got good responses. American experts spoke highly of the conference during which both sides talked about important academic issues deeply. Besides they were impressed by Chines teachers’ and students’ enthusiastic participation.