[Personal_archives] distinctions among user types and benign neglect as s...

[RICKBARRY at aol.com]

 (mailto:cathymar at microsoft.com) 
 
PRODUCT
 
As noted in my last em, some years ago, I've been interested in following  
the development of real products for personal recordkeeping. Among the  
links on the mybestdocs Pers Erecs page are some to Microsoft's  MyLifeBits 
project, which caught my interest some years ago. After a couple  of very 
interesting discussions with MS principal researcher Gordon Bell (I'm  sure a 
colleague very well known to Cathy's), I didn't see any signs of a  product in 
the near future, which I thought/think is much  needed. While the latest 
thing I've seen on MyLifeBits (prior to reading  Cathy's references to it in her 
D-Lib papers) is the excellent piece in the May  07 Scientific American 
(and the interesting comments on it in the SciAm as well  as in a just prior 
critique of it on Nate Anderson's ArsTechnica Open Forum and  the (sometimes 
amusing) responses to that). My conclusion was that we weren't  going to see 
a product very soon and that, although the MyBits lit does make  reference 
to capturing everything including personal records, I get the  idea that it 
is a recordmaking but not recordkeeping system and see no evidence  that it 
plans to be; rather it appears to be more like a typically research  oriented 
university institutional repository that has little if any serious  
recordkeeping functionality, a la 5015.2, MoReq, etc. Perhaps now, or  later on, 
Cathy can share her views on the relationship between her's and the  
MyLifeBits project and where she sees any forthcoming product in the offing by  
Microsoft or the competition. 
 
The second of the first 2 products (behind the Canadian Provenance  System) 
to be certified as 5015 compliant in '96 was an Australian system,  the 
Tower Software Company's (disclosure: a former client)  TRIM  system for 
enterprise recordkeeping. I raised the issue of personal records with  the then 
managing director who informed me that Tower did have a personal  
recordkeeping product but didn't sell well. My personal view was that it was a  lite 
version of the powerful enterprise system rather than a bottom-up design  for 
personal RK. And it was never seriously promoted in my view. TRIM was also  
originally designed as a recordkeeping product, not in the then-EDM space. 
Thus,  while it (and Provenance) gained quick attention in the federal gov 
when NARA  endorsed 5015 for use by federal agencies, it got the attention of 
few  others, and archivists and records managers were not sufficiently 
effective or  at least successful in getting their own management to buy into them 
in the US  until it showed up on the 5015 list of certified products. CIOs 
wanted  enterprise systems in the EDMS and later ECMS spaces. It totally 
caught the  mighty US technology firms off base -- what's this records 
management business  all about? Don't we do that?  It took a couple of years for 
some of them to  catch up and more for others to begin to understand that 
records management was  a quite rigorous form of information management with 
correspondingly more  rigorous functional and technical requirements that their 
EDM products didn't  support. As it turned out, most of them didn't do well 
with  incorporating RK fixes to their own EDM/ECM products and after trying 
their  hands at it, they finally simply acquired specialized ERK companies 
and  their products, I believe with the exception of FileNet that built its 
RK  product from the bottom up to meet not just RK compliance needs but also  
industry-specific needs -- food, pharmaceuticals, financial (SEC,  
Sarbanes-Oxley), etc.  Filenet was as you know acquired by IBM. With the  noted 
exception, how well the old giants have succeeded in integrating other  people's 
software into their ECM systems, I'm not so sure. 
 
I think that there is a likely growing need for products that support  
different kinds of users, taking account of the demographics noted in my earlier 
 em that 
 
-- actually make it easy and relatively transparent at the information  
level to the end user 
-- that helps the user on the media side with the cloud
-- steers the user to building or massaging a provided taxonomy of personal 
 business processes or personal functions with as invisible and simple as  
possible macroappraisal criteria and tools to separate the stuff "for the 
kids",  for my collections, for my finances, for other stuff for the  kids", 
etc. 
 
Perhaps another time.
 
Regards,
 
Rick
 

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