Library-Archives

Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board

In Association with the Wisconsin Historical Society

2006-2011 STRATEGIC PLAN

• I. Preface
• II. Introduction
• III. The Environment
• IV. Meeting the Challenges
• V. Goals
• VI. Schedule of Work for the Plan

I. Preface

To the People of Wisconsin:

Our state’s historical records hold the authentic stories about all of us who have lived, worked and made homes in Wisconsin. It is of the greatest importance to keep these records for our enjoyment and to benefit future generations. Like the natural environment that we protect to enhance our lives, our historical records require the best care we can give them so that they can enrich our education programs and create greater understanding of our experience.

For this reason, I urge you to read the Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board's (WHRAB) plan for preserving the original documents from our history. It highlights the major challenge posed by government records in digital formats and proposes actions to improve the knowledge and skills of everyone who keeps records.

I endorse this plan and call on all organizations with a role in creating, keeping or using historical records to work with the Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board. Participating in the work of this plan will ensure that Wisconsin’s historical records remain a vital part of our cultural heritage.

Sincerely,

Jim Doyle
Governor, State of Wisconsin

• A. WHRAB's Mission

The Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board (WHRAB) promotes the availability and use of records with historical value as keys to the state’s cultural heritage. It leads collaborative efforts to preserve records and increase their accessibility by promoting education about archives and best archival practices and by helping Wisconsin organizations obtain federal grant funding. WHRAB advises the Director of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Governor of Wisconsin on all matters concerning the state’s historical records.

• B. Vision Statement

The people of Wisconsin will benefit from a deeper understanding of their heritage through preserved and accessible records that document their diverse and rich history. Acting on their behalf, the Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board will serve as the nucleus of a coalition of Wisconsin’s historical records organizations, playing the role of educator, advocate, promoter, planner, and coordinator. The Board will aid these constituents directly through federal grant funding and will provide a meeting ground for all of them, fostering common agendas and goals.

II. Introduction

Governor Patrick Lucey created the Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board (WHRAB) in 1977 through an executive order, a charter that has been renewed in each succeeding gubernatorial term. The executive order described the Board’s two-fold purpose: assisting Wisconsin citizens to preserve and maintain access to historical records and making Wisconsin organizations eligible for federal grant funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Of the Board’s ten members, two had seats through their official state positions (the Director of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the State Archivist). The Governor appointed the other eight members to serve staggered three-year terms.

WHRAB has twice previously created blueprints for its statewide work: through the state historical assessment and planning project in 1982 and in the 1996-2001 "Partnerships for Preserving Wisconsin History" strategic plan. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) charged WHRAB to conduct both efforts and provided funding for them. WHRAB has developed this new plan through an identical NHPRC mandate and with NHPRC project funding.

WHRAB has used an issues-based approach to this plan. To collect information throughout Wisconsin and the United States, it surveyed Wisconsin repositories, officials in state record keeping offices, archivists, and individuals who have worked closely with the Board. The survey questionnaires covered electronic records management, archival training, historical records collecting, collections digitizing, and trends in archives use. An analysis of the survey data by the project staff (Board chair Peter Gottlieb and project assistant Karen Kron) and planning team (Board members Matt Blessing and Skip Belstner and consultant Frank Martinelli) was presented at a June 8-9 meeting of Board members and statewide stakeholders, at Marquette University's Raynor Memorial Library. The meeting identified four critical planning issues that became the groundwork for this plan. Based on these issues the same participants drafted and revised the goals for this plan and brainstormed implementation strategies and activities.

• A. The Importance of Our Historical Records

Since WHRAB adopted its 1996-2001 plan, changes in information technology have changed the ways that we keep, share, and preserve historical records. Client-server networks have replaced computer mainframes, giving individual workers in organizations crucial responsibility for initial decisions on what records to keep and how to manage them. The Internet and powerful browsers have revolutionized the way people search for records. Wireless technology has made computers more useful in more ways than ever before. Clearly, trends in information technology continue to deeply influence the environment in which our work with historical records takes place.

In some ways, these dramatic changes have eclipsed concerns for record keeping and for authentic, trustworthy historical records. In too many organizations, records created and kept by computers are not regarded as records at all or are categorized as transitory. E-mail messages are commonly equated with telephone conversations and discarded casually, whether or not they have content with long-term importance. Information technology directors too often consider the overall management of electronic records and the preservation of those records with historical value as a merely technical matter. They address these crucial functions with some additional programming or software applications and with little analysis.

On the other hand, the ever wider use of computers and the Internet have in some ways increased the public’s appreciation of historical records’ value. Far from rendering the identification and care of these records just another automated process, the use of new technology and the Internet have often demonstrated that only careful and focused planning for records preservation can safeguard society’s documentary legacy. As the jeopardy to electronic records has become clearer, awareness of the risk to historical records and of their value has slowly grown.

The potential widespread loss of records with historical value has been a regrettable but healthy reminder of how important these records are to the public. It is commonplace to recognize that historical records provide both memory and accountability for all organizations. For governments at all levels, records are fundamental instruments of democratic processes, from elections to the use of public funds, and government archives hold information that protects citizens’ rights and guarantees their government benefits. Businesses and other private sector organizations similarly depend on historical records to maintain regulated relationships with constituents and customers, to protect intellectual property and to foster their own culture and identity that today is called their brand. At the most fundamental level, preserved and accessible historical records enable transparent organizational processes on which public confidence and support depend.

Historical records’ value for individuals, families, and communities exceeds even this. New technologies for record keeping increase risks to long-term preservation here, too, and tend to raise awareness of these historical records’ importance. Some CD and DVD vendors now advertise the length of time their products can reliably store digital images. As families keep their photographs on these new media, and more individuals create their personal music archives and play lists using digital sound formats, the impermanence of this important documentation stimulates a new appreciation of its value.

This perspective on today’s personal historical records easily leads to a recognition of how often people create and rely on them. Whenever they gather, family members use scrapbooks and albums to share memories and strengthen their bonds. In a similar way, when everyday groups like school classes, parents’ birthing classes, and armed services units hold reunions, they pool their members’ photographs and personal documents to sustain their group identities. When ethnic groups, local communities, or interest groups first come together for a common purpose, they soon start collecting their members’ personal and family documents, to remember where they began and who made key contributions.

Archivists often see the results of all this personal and community record keeping, when a family or group decides to place its historical documents in a repository. At that point, the importance of the records for understanding personal lives and associations becomes very clear. What is less evident is how significant the records have been in the donors’ daily lives, defining who they are, where they come from, and who were their dearest friends and relatives. Whether the records are handwritten letters and albums of photographic prints or electronic files of e-mail and web logs, they allow us to put names with faces and to save individual and group aspirations, relationships, and accomplishments from obscurity. Archivists take over the records creators’ role of keeping the documents, but they add the essential functions of preserving the records and making them publicly accessible. Archivists and the repositories they staff make it possible for historical records to enrich our cultural heritage.

III. The Environment

WHRAB has studied Wisconsin’s records keepers, creators and users to identify the primary trends affecting today’s environment. The Board made this assessment with information from several sources: responses to survey questionnaires, data from a national census of archivists, and group discussions with graduate students in archival education programs. Data and notes from these sources are posted on the project page.

Expressed as trends that currently shape the environment for Wisconsin’s historical records (and that will continue shaping it for the coming three to five years), the results of WHRAB’s study show that:

Records and many other kinds of documents are increasingly created and kept only in electronic formats. In step with the rest of the country, Wisconsin has crossed a threshold into an era when creating records electronically is the norm. A significant amount of these records may at some point be printed, but their original and most authentic form is electronic. There is little proven methodology for caring for electronic records and for preserving them over time. Software vendors have started to produce records and content management programs, but archivists have seldom become active contributors to the design and implementation of these automated tools or to broader efforts to maintain electronic records. At the same time, whole generations of earlier electronic records are reaching the end of their active use and need to be converted to another medium to increase longevity.

Another stream that is feeding the volume of electronic records is the digital conversion of paper and microfilmed records. Government offices, businesses, and cultural institutions increasingly scan hard copy records and need to maintain the resulting electronic versions. Most surveyed Wisconsin archivists express the need for more training in electronic records management and preservation.

Users increasingly expect 24/7 access to all sorts of information. As the Internet increasingly serves as the first and preferred source for any kind of information, those who want to use historical records - particularly younger people - no longer accept the need to use physical repositories or to schedule their historical records use on a conventional schedule of business hours. Though only a minute fraction of Wisconsin’s historical records has become web accessible, keepers of historical records have begun to meet users’ expectation and have stimulated strikingly higher levels of use by creating digital collections on the Internet. Wisconsin archivists need more training in digital conversion procedures and in the care of digital collections.

Concerns about information security and privacy are leading to restrictions on access to information, including records with historical value. The ease by which electronic information systems and the Internet can share records, plus publicity about computer records and national security and about inappropriate leaks and uses of records, has sensitized some records creators and keepers to access problems. The trend has sometimes been discussed as a conflict between individual privacy and freedom of information, but in an environment where electronic records management and preservation lack uniform standards, the tendency has become to place more and more records beyond public access. While legitimate users of records face more obstacles to access, record keepers’ fears for the integrity and safety of records persists.

Government funding for historic records is being cut, at the same time as demand for access to historic records is increasing. Public funding from federal and state governments has been the most important financial support for historical records programs. Competing needs for such funding and public resistance to paying more taxes has created a sharp budget pinch, especially for archives in publicly-funded higher education and cultural institutions. Pushing in the other direction, demand for access to historical records has been growing among traditional users in Wisconsin like genealogists and members of the academic community as well as from newer audiences like middle- and high-school students and their teachers. Archives in the state report rising numbers of users.

Two University of Wisconsin campuses have recently strengthened and expanded graduate programs in archives administration. After several years of uncertain status, these programs have achieved greater stability and the potential to attract a growing number of candidates for advanced training in archives. These students seek professionally managed archival programs and experienced archivist mentors for practicum courses, internships, and independent study projects. As a group, the students can provide a pool of skills and talents for local, institutional as well as statewide historical records programs.

Wisconsin ’s population and the state’s archivists are aging. Wisconsin’s residents are on average older than those of other states, and the imminent retirement of the baby boom generation will shift Wisconsin’s age profile further into the upper-age brackets. Wisconsin’s archivists as a group are also markedly older than their counterparts elsewhere in the U.S. and closer to the end of their careers. While the graying of the state’s population generally might lead to greater interest in history and in historical records, the ranks of the professionals who care for and provide access to those records will need replenishing from a new cohort of archivists.

Development of new ethnic communities and of ethnic group cultural institutions. Wisconsin’s population has grown more ethnically diverse throughout the late twentieth century, and this trend seems to have increased recently. As the Latino population has expanded rapidly from its long established urban base, Hmong and Somali immigrants have established communities. Although some notable efforts have been made, historical records programs in the state have collected relatively little on any of these ethnic groups. At the same time, Wisconsin’s Native American tribes have started their own cultural institutions, some of which have archival collections. While Wisconsin’s new ethnic groups require historical documentation in state repositories, both these tribal archives and nascent ethnic historical organizations provide new partners and new constituents for statewide historical records work.

IV. Meeting the Challenges

Through its analysis of survey data and extensive discussions with representatives of its stakeholders, WHRAB has chosen four issues on which to focus its work in the next five years.

Electronic Records: What role should the Board play in addressing the major preservation challenges posed by the emergence of electronic records?

Training : In an era of rapid change, how can the Board assist records creators and keepers in becoming proficient in core competencies?

Documenting Wisconsin History : What needs to be collected to document the diverse history of Wisconsin from 1945 to the present?

Resources : How can the Board assist records creators/keepers in retaining existing resources and finding alternative funding sources?

WHRAB has adopted the following four goals to guide its work in the next five years.

• Lead efforts to meet the electronic records preservation and access challenges
• Promote training in core competencies for records creators and keepers
• Promote the collection of historical records that document the diverse history of Wisconsin, from 1945 to the present.
• Increase public awareness and support for historical records preservation and access.

Each goal corresponds with one of the issues that emerged from the study of the environment and discussions with stakeholders, but each one also supports all of the others. Together, the four goals point toward a future of better preserved and more accessible historical records for Wisconsin’s residents.

WHRAB has also developed strategies for its work in the next five years. These strategies represent basic approaches we can take in working on all of the goals. WHRAB's strategies for its 2006-11 goals are:

1) Build Partnerships with Statewide Organizations: WHRAB’s mission defines its role as a promoter and facilitator of work to improve Wisconsin’s historical records. Fulfilling this role requires partnerships in which WHRAB can draw on existing capabilities and knowledge to enhance preservation and access for records.

2) Raise Awareness of the Value of Historical Records: Advocacy is one of WHRAB’s principle functions. It supports not only the Board’s own work but all progress in improving historical records.

3) Promote Standards and Best Practices: WHRAB wants its programs to deliver services and assistance in the most effective way possible. Basing these on current standards and best practices brings the best available procedures to records creators, keepers and users and encourages WHRAB and its partners to use methods with proven success.

4) Gain Funding: WHRAB’s actions toward its goals must concentrate on steps that can gain financial support or other needed resources. Having no ongoing budget of its own, the Board has to develop programs that can attract the grant funding, private donations, and contributions from partner organizations, to add to the basic administrative support from the Wisconsin Historical Society.

5) Communicate the Board’s Goals: Advancing the strategic plan requires WHRAB to publicize its own mission and work. It can gain support for any particular program by making stakeholders, constituents and officeholders increasingly aware of the goals of the plan and of its own fundamental purpose.

6) Build Momentum: The development of the strategic plan brought together individuals from several fields that have strong vested interests in historical records. Work on the plan must keep all these contributors well-informed of progress and obstacles, and continually widen participation in the Board’s work.

Based on these strategies, WHRAB will work with partner organizations to implement actions for each of the goals. The following outline shows more detail on the specific actions and implementation steps for each of the four goals.

V. Goals

Goal #1: Lead Efforts to Meet the Electronic Records Preservation and Access Challenges.

Actions

• Identify and promote best practices
• Provide education and training

Implementation Steps

Best Practices:

• Work with DOA on best practices for state government executive branch records
• Adapt state government best practices for government records
• Distribute and publicize best practices

Education and Training:

• Seek NHPRC Funding for Government ER Training
• Build curriculum based on best practices
• Deliver workshops/presentations

Goal #2: Promote Training in Core Competencies for Records Creators and Keepers.

Actions

• Identify core competencies and incorporate into training/education
• Collaborate to provide and promote training
• Expand Wisconsin Archives Mentoring Service

Implementation Steps

Identify Core Competencies:

• Create task force on historical records training
• Identify core competencies/standards

Collaborate to Provide and Promote Training:

• Develop new curriculum based on core competencies
• Plan workshops program
• Launch training workshops program

Expand Wisconsin Archives Mentoring Service:

• Solicit participation of more repositories
• Recruit more mentors
• Improve delivery of mentoring services
• Connect mentoring with training workshops

Goal #3: Promote the Collection of Historical Records that Document the Diverse History of Wisconsin, from 1945 to the Present.

Actions

• Sponsor Wisconsin historical records collecting project
• Coordinate online directory of Wisconsin collections

Implementation Steps

Sponsor Collecting Project:

• Identify participants
• Seek NHPRC grant funding
• Survey and analyze data from Wisconsin archives
• Prepare and distribute report on Wisconsin archives' holdings
• Hold regional/statewide conferences
• Prepare report on conference: "Blueprint for Collecting Wisconsin History"

Coordinate Online Directory:

• Recruit participants and sponsors
• Use Survey of Wisconsin Archives to create directory structure and content
• Develop directory website

Goal #4: Increase public awareness and support for historical records preservation and access.

Actions

• Strengthen WHRAB advocacy programs through partnerships
• Inform officeholders about WHRAB and its work
• Collaborate to provide fundraising training

Implementation Steps

Strengthen Advocacy:

• Identify key partners and constituencies for Archives Month and Archives Award
• Develop new advocacy program ideas and identify partners
• Gather ideas about marketing/PR from partners and constituencies
• Launch improved Archives Month / Archives Award programs
• Launch new advocacy programs

Inform Officeholders:

• Invite Governor/legislators/local officials to WHRAB program events
• Keep officeholders informed about WHRAB (annual report, newsletter, information about NHPRC grants to constituents)

Coordinate Fundraising Training:

• Research need for fundraising training
• Find workshop instructors/programs
• Facilitate delivery of workshops
  

VI. Schedule of Work for the Plan

Stakeholder Representatives List

• Renae R. Baxter
  Rusk County Clerk of Circuit Court
  renae.baxter@wicourts.gov
• Lori Belongia
  Director
  Marshfield Public Library
  lbelongia@marshfieldlibrary.org
• Matthew J. Carpenter
  Director of Interpretive Programs/Curator of Collections
  Outagamie County Historical Society
  matt@foxvalleyhistory.org
• Mary Feldman
  Business Process Lead Quality Assurance
  Consolidated Court Automation Programs
  mary.feldman@wicourts.gov
• Amy Moran
  Assistant Director, State Voter Registration System
  Wisconsin Elections Board
  amy.moran@seb.state.wi.us
• Helen Stoltz-Wood
  Graduate Student
  University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
  hs35@uwrf.edu
• Michael J. Foret, Ph.D.
  Associate Professor of History
  University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
  mforet@uwsp.edu
• Joy Reisinger
  Certified Genealogist
  joycgrs@centurytel.net
• Michael Doylen, Ph.D.
  Archives Department Head
  University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
  doylenm@uwm.edu
• Nikki Mandell
  Associate Professor of History
  University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
  mandelln@uww.edu
• Carol Fure
  Burnett County Historical Society
  fahp@centurytel.net
• Kenneth WhiteHorse
  Teacher
  Schenk Elementary School
  kwhitehorse@madison.k12.wi.us
• Clayborn Benson
  Director
  Wisconsin Black Historical Society
  clayborn@execpc.com