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This paper aims to report the deployment of open source electronic content management software in national government departments in South Africa, with the view to raise awareness of the free and open source software (FOSS) policy. Many countries including South Africa have developed policies that encourage the deployment of free and open source software (FOSS).

The paper opted for qualitative data collected through interviews with four chief information officers, five information technology (IT) officials, two records managers from government departments, one archivist from the National Archives of South Africa and one IT official from the State Information Technology Agency; these were selected purposively from national government departments. Furthermore, a free test trial of open source software, Alfresco Community Edition, was conducted for a 30-day period during September 2013. Alfresco was chosen as it is the preferred FOSS in government departments in South Africa.

The key finding reveals that, in contrast with the FOSS policy, governmental bodies in South Africa preferred proprietary software over FOSS, as only one government department has migrated to FOSS. The reasons cited for the low uptake of open source electronic content management include the perceived lack of support for FOSS or short lifespan support which was confirmed through the trial test, as well as a lack of IT skills by records management practitioners who are responsible for implementation of electronic content management and hidden costs as the internal staff would spend time supporting, tailoring and enhancing the software. It is observed that failure to raise awareness and benefits of the FOSS policy in South Africa will curtail the document into a dull epistle.

Due to the chosen research approach and sampling method, the results were not generalised to the population. It is hoped that the study will stimulate further research interest and raise awareness in government departments with regard to FOSS policy implementation, especially in the area of electronic content management.

The paper shows the difficulty in implementing a policy and putting it into practice without looking into its practical feasibility.

This research attempts to bridge the gap and bring new elements by assessing the level of FOSS adoption in the area of electronic content management which is often ignored by the government and also less researched by scholars.

This study aims to find out how the e-records management subject has been researched and tackled by researchers in the Eastern and Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA).

This research paper applied a bibliometric survey, where a quantitative survey of the literature pertaining to the study of e-records management in the ESARBICA region, covering the period from 2000 to 2016, was conducted applying bibliometric methods. The survey aimed at providing descriptive data that cast a spotlight on the features and development of the e-records management base literature in the ESARBICA region.

The research data display a lamentable outlook in the contribution to the electronic records management body of knowledge from the ESARBICA region. Few research articles from professionals in the records and archives management are being published. These figures call for increased investments in electronic records management research by institutions in ESARBICA, as management of electronic content has become the centre of political and socio-economic development. Follow-up studies need to be done to counter limitations placed on this research paper. The findings show that there is under production of research publications in the ESARBICA region. The region only contributed 2 per cent of the total world output in the period under review and in the study of electronic records management from journals indexed by Scopus.

A bibliometric study places researchers at the mercy of analysing incomplete information due to limitations of resources. The variance in use of terminology (key words) by authors in published research articles may entail some being left out in an analysis of articles the same subject matter. As much as due diligence was placed on using Boolean search methods to counter such limitations they are unavoidable. An interpretation of bibliometric or citation analysis research is subjective as some analysts may label results incomplete or unreliable; hence, this paper finds itself in the same predicament. Inability to access the Thompson Reuters Web of Science database left the authors with Scopus as the only option, as Google Scholar was overlooked due to difficulties of having to rely on third-party software for analysing its indexed content that are mostly inaccurate and or ambiguous.

The findings of this study help uncover areas in e-records management, which have been researched over the years, and identify the prominent e-records management researchers in the ESARBICA region.

A number of bibliometric studies have been conducted; however, none has been conducted to establish e-records management research trends in the ESRABICA region.

In recent years, there have been considerable developments in both international and national laws relating to copyright, as governments struggle to come to terms with developments in technology. Libraries, too, are attempting to find appropriate ways of managing the rights in electronic materials. Based on a research trip made to the UK in 2001, explores some of the electronic rights management systems and solutions being developed in UK libraries and information organisations. Study participants were interviewed about the various technologies that have been developed in this area, the types of materials covered by each, and their costs, availability and intended future developments, with a view to gaining an understanding of the electronic rights management tools that might be available to libraries.

Anecdotal evidence about electronic document management systems implies that they sound good, but implementation is difficult. This paper seeks to utilise the assertions of Hughes and King that the document is a social artefact and to ask what this might mean for electronic document management systems.

After analysing the layers of information contained in documents, the study argues that documents are “wrapping” for content that ensures the provision of social knowledge required for interpretation of the document's content.

Some information systems writers argue that the need for social knowledge in a task negates the possibility of the automation of it. So it can be argued that the “electronic document” is an oxymoron; that only part of what we know to be a document can be provided electronically. The paper concludes that greater success might be achieved by discarding the idea of electronically delivering documents and instead focusing on the delivery of content.

The article explores the fundamental nature of electronic systems and the resulting implications for the form and structure of electronic objects within such systems – a significant issue, which is transferable to the record‐keeping arena.

Digital records are either stored in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) or an electronic content management (ECM) system or managed without the benefit of either. To achieve high productivity, integration of these systems is required. However, the utilisation of either an ERP or ECM system is absent in many organisations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the development of a framework that may support the integration of an ERP into an ECM system at Rand Water.

This qualitative study used a case design with 14 interviewees from different levels in the organisation and diverse business units using ERP and ECM to perform their operational deliverables. Purposive sampling was used to select the interviewees in line with their area of work, role and level of operation.

This study established that the water utility company has implemented an ERP system (SAP) since 2004 and ECM systems since 1991 (Papertrail and later IBM FileNet) with only the information flow module integrated. This study suggested that to integrate ERP into ECM, human and non-human actors need to collaborate to ensure large-scale integration.

This study presents a framework for integrating ERP into ECM. It is suggested that an integration module for ERPs called extended ECM, be considered. A further study of the transfer of digital records in ECM into archival custody is recommended.

This article aims to describe how people manage to integrate their use of paper and electronic documents in modern office work environments.

An observational interview type study of 14 participants from 11 offices in eight organizations was conducted. Recorded data were analysed using a thematic analysis method. This involved reading and annotation of interview transcripts, categorizing, linking and connecting, corroborating, and producing an account of the study.

The findings of the study can be categorized into four groups: the roles paper and electronic documents serve in today's offices, the ways in which these documents are managed, the problems associated with their management, and the types of fragmentation that exist in terms of their management and how these are dealt with.

The study has identified the need for better integrated management of paper and electronic documents in present-day offices. The findings of the study have then been used to propose a set of guidelines for the development of integrated paper and electronic document management systems.

Although similar studies of offices have been conducted in the past, almost all of these studies are prior to the widespread use of mobile and network-based shared technologies in office environments. Furthermore, previous studies have generally failed to identify and propose guidelines for integration of paper and electronic document management systems.

This paper aims to widen as well as deepen the discussion on standards and good practice guidelines beyond just local or regional efforts and include international developments.

An extensive review of literature was used to develop an outline of existing standards and good practice guidelines that are used by records management professionals to manage digital records.

The analysis reveals that there has been a long tradition in standards and good practice guidelines development dating back to the 1980s. The study also reveals that there are two broad categories of standards and good practice guidelines, those with assessment mechanisms and those without such mechanisms. The choice of whether to have an assessment mechanism depends on the purpose for which a standard or good practice guideline is developed.

The paper explores an extensive array of standards and good practice guidelines, their utility and their geographical coverage. It demonstrates how different terms such as Electronic Records Management Systems, Electronic Document Management Systems, Electronic Document and Records Management Systems and Enterprise Content Management have been used without much clarity on how these terms relate to each other, and proposes a clarification framework.

The paper aims to assess the level of preparedness of the Central Libraries of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to personalize content and seeks to determine whether the personalization service prototype being developed at IIT Kharagpur can be extrapolated to the remaining IITs.

A questionnaire was sent to the Librarians of the seven IITs, designed to compare the available information resources and services, with special emphasis on user interests and personalization aspects. The survey was supplemented by study visits to a couple of the Institutes.

Kharagpur and Mumbai have implemented personalization services in some form while the remaining IITs plan to adopt them in the near future. There is also a strong case for extending Kharagpur's personalization service, currently in project mode, to the other IITs.

IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur failed to return the questionnaires, so relevant information regarding these Institutes had to be collected from their web sites and other available sources. There is also scope for further research to accurately access the current status of personalization activities in all the IITs.

With parallel interests and similar research and information facilities, personalization services in one IIT can be replicated and utilized by all the others, leading to greatly enhanced library services in all the Institutes.

This one of a kind survey underlines the need for and possibility of making content personalization a reality in advanced technical libraries. The results obtained are valuable to all IIT libraries in particular and academic/technical libraries in general.

This study aims to determine the technical requirements for copyright protection of theses and dissertations for proposing a model for applying in Iran’s National System for Theses and Dissertations (INSTD).

This study used a mixed research methodology. The grounded theory was used in the qualitative phase, and a researcher-made checklist was applied in the quantitative phase for surveying the status of the INSTD. Research population included INSTD as well as six information specialists and copyright experts. Data were analysed by using open, axial and selective coding.

Based on data extracted from the completed checklists, some technical requirements had been provided in the system. The technical requirements that interviewees pointed out included the following two main classes: technical components and technical-software infrastructures, explored in the phase of the grounded theory. The individual categories included access control, copy control, technical-software challenges, protecting standards, hypertext transfer protocol secure, certificate authority, documentation of thesis and dissertation information, the use of digital object identifiers, copy detection systems, thesis and dissertation integrated systems, digital rights management systems and electronic copyright management systems.

Considering the subject of this study, only the technical aspect was investigated, and other aspects were not included. In addition, electronic theses and dissertation (ETD) providers were not well aware of copyright issues.

Using the technical requirements with high security is effective in the INSTD to gain the trust of the authors and encourage them to deposit their ETDs.

The increased use of the system encourages the authors to be more innovative in conducting their research.

Considering the continued violation of copyright in electronic databases, applying technical requirements for copyright protection and regulating users’ access to the information of theses and dissertations are needed in the INSTD.

The implementation of enterprise content management (ECM) software applications has been a subject of extensive discussion. Although a number of ECM scholars have provided guidance on ECM implementation, there is a gap in how to assess benefits accruing from the implementation. One of the approaches of assessment is the use of maturity models. This paper aims to examine the utility of other ECM maturity model (ECM3) as an assessment tool.

The study was undertaken based on two related research questions, the first explored ECM3 assessment within a South African context and the second explored the utility of other maturity models for ECM implementation and lessons learnt to improve ECM3.

The results show that all the South African institutions assessed using ECM3 had a low level of maturity and there are a number of maturity models comparable to ECM3, and the global survey provides the closest parallel to the survey conducted in South Africa.

The study offers a unique discussion on the possible utility of ECM3 as a maturity model for assessing ECM implementation. This was done by comparing it with maturity models developed or used by records professionals and through assessing the results of two surveys, one conducted amongst South African institutions and another conducted by the Real Story Group.