Research: Records Management
The "big data" problems that much of my work focuses on necessarily involve a heavy emphasis on records management. I have extensive experience on all levels of records management, including preservation, versioning, and provenance, and a study published in governmental document management in 2008 was published in the New York Times and covered in radio, television, and on thousands of news and blog websites around the world.
- Preservation and Versioning. I've worked extensively on issues of preservation and versioning in large records management systems. In 2008 a study I coauthored at the University of Illinois with Scott Althaus on changing White House press releases was published in the New York Times, in radio and television, and on news and blog websites throughout the world.
- Provenance. In large record systems where multiple users are contributing and editing content, it is critically important to track each and every change to any record, along with detailed information on who made the change, when, and from where. Records that build on other records (for example, a summary report that draws from multiple technical reports) must similarly move beyond simple academic citations towards true provenance tracking. I've worked extensively on provenance issues, integrating advanced lifecycle provenance architectures into all of my record management systems.
- Medical Records. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I worked extensively with Electronic Medical Records and Electronic Healthcare Records, evaluating current architectures, developing prototype architectures, addressing both remote field and in-hospital access, data storage, transfer formats, and HIPAA regulations.
- Transfer Formats. When converting between file formats, there is always a certain degree of loss in the underlying data. This is especially true when converting between high-level formats that include underlying data ontologies. Crosswalks that translate between two differing ontologies will rarely result in an exact match, and in environments like healthcare, mismatches can have significantly negative impacts.
In November 2008 my colleague Scott Althaus and I released a study on the revisionist history of a key White House press release relating to the Coalition of the Willing for the Iraq War. We found that the list was altered over a period of years to add and remove countries, all without altering the date of the press releases, making it appear that the countries had always (or never) been a member of the coalition. The "Airbrushing History report has become a classic in the study of government documents and preservation and archival of web documents.
- Airbrushing History, American Style. (November 25, 2008). With Scott Althaus.
- Changes in White House Documents Raise Concern about Rewriting History. (November 25, 2008). University of Illinois Press Release.
- Airbrushing History, American Style: The Mutability of Government Documents in the Digital Era. D-Lib. Vol 15, Num 1/2. (January/February 2009). With Scott Althaus.
- New York Times.
- New York Times Editorial Board.
- MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann - November 25, 2008.
- US News & World Report.
- La Repubblica.
- Huffington Post.
- Huffington Post Editorial.
- IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency - November 26, 2008.
- Michael Moore.com - November 25, 2008.
- Think Progress.
- Information Week.
- TechUp (Italy).
- History News Network.
- Nomme Raadio (Estonian Radio) - December 1, 2008.