Thirty Years of Electronic Records.(Book Review)

Thirty Years of Electronic Records. Edited by Bruce I. Ambacher. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003. xix, 190 pp. $42.00 (paper). ISBN 0-8108-4769-8.

Most of the eleven papers in this volume (Margaret Adams, Bruce Ambacher, Thomas Brown, Charles Dollar, Edie Hedlin, Linda Henry, Kenneth Thibodeaux) were drawn from presentations given at the 2000 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Denver in a blockbuster double session entitled "Thirty Years' Perspective: History of the Electronic Records Program at the National Archives and Records Administration." The book is organized in chapters: an overall history followed by chapters on appraisal, processing, description, and reference; then chapters on the planning for the ultimate Electronic Records Archives and on the litigation over the PROFS email system and the General Records Schedule applying to email; then a single chapter incorporating brief "views of managers" offering personal experiences and angles not treated in the history; and finally, a chapter on the quite significant impact of the electronic records grants made by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) beginning in 1991. For those who lack an intimate acquaintance with the history of NARA's involvement…