wfn.org | Archives agency warns of drawbacks to electronic records

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 1, 2003	    News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202)
546-87227Washington	10-71B{195}

By United Methodist News Service 

Saving official church records is not always as simple as it may appear,
according to the United Methodist agency charged with preserving the
denomination's historical documents.

The churchwide Commission on Archives and History, with offices in Madison,
N.J., is particularly concerned that some annual (regional) conferences are
considering publishing their annual journals electronically as a cost-cutting
measure.

"Our basic suggestion is that regardless of the publication process, the
conference should still create a limited number of paper copies of the
conference journal on acid-free paper," according to a March 27 letter to all
conference secretaries.

"With the continued rapid change of technology there is no guarantee that an
electronic journal will be readable in five to 10 years," the agency said.

Data stored 15 years ago on 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppy disks has been lost
if it has not been transferred to more recent formats, the letter noted. 

"In addition to the fact that the physical storage medium will change over
time, there is also the problem of being able to read a file for the long
term," a commission archivist wrote. "Already, earlier versions of Word
documents cannot be read by the current Word program."

A conference journal needs to be accessed for at least 50 years in dealing
with personnel issues, such as pastors' pensions, said L. Dale Patterson,
archivist and records administrator at the commission.

"The electronic solution is to migrate files whenever the technology
changes," he said. "This is often treated as a trivial exercise, but it is
not. It costs time and money to migrate a file from one medium or one program
to another." The time when the tools for accomplishing this are available is
usually limited, and the loss of data or formatting is a real risk.

Patterson pointed out that the United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline
requires that two copies of the conference journal be sent to the
denomination's Commission on Archives and History and two copies to the
conference archives. At the very least, these should be paper copies, he
said. He urged that additional paper copies be given to the bishop, district
superintendents and the conference office.

Questions can be directed to Patterson at dpatterson@gcah.org or (973)
408-3195.

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United Methodist News Service
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