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This paper considers the sometimes serious and controversial political, legal, institutional and technological issues that were triggered by the mass transfer and copying of electronic presidential records by the Sixteenth President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) at the end of his term of office.

During this administration, the Korean government made significant government‐wide recordkeeping innovations, mainly initiated and supported by the then President Roh Moo Hyun, and also supported by civilian professionals. The Public Records Management Act (PRMA) was revised, the Presidential Records Act (PRA) legislated and the National Archives of Korea tripled in staff size and made significant government records innovations. At the end of his term, the President copied all of his presidential records in electronic form and kept them for his own use, transferring the “authenticated” records to the National Archives. The National Archives subsequently charged his former secretaries with violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The paper summarizes the records issues to give further consideration to electronic records matters as well as dealing with politically sensitive records in the public archives. Can recordkeeping and politics be divorced? If so, how?

The paper provides insight into the political dimension of recordkeeping in the public, government context in Korea.

The Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT), Government of Canada, through Shastri Indo‐Canadian Institute, encourages Indian scholars for Understanding Canada Faculty Research, Fellowships; the author visited Canada during March 2010 to study Canadian archival system, especially records management in archives in Ontario province; the driving rationale for the study was the realization that there existed very few or no archives and record management (ARM) programs in India. This study intends to report different types of ARM programs in Canada, with special reference to e‐records management, namely automation status, creation of virtual exhibits, preservation of digital images, metadata standard for e‐records, etc.

The author visited national, provincial and municipal archives and conducted unstructured interviews with archives staff/managers.

Records are considered as commodity and attempts to improve their management has necessitated a more integrated and controlled approach. In this study, it is noted that archivist and records managers have at present very little influence on policy implementation of archives and working under university librarian and less influence on decision making. All the university archives get a nominal amount from library budget. No separate budget for archives is available; modest budgets are allocated for rare book collection. The total archives concept in English Canada is based on the American system. The responsibility for collecting and copying its historical records fell to the government; with the so‐called convergence of technologies helping to fulfill new demands and rising expectations and to empower the end‐user. It was possible to establish very good relations with the archivists of these institutions and the author is keen to keep contact with them. It is expected that this study will serve as a building block to deeper examinations of broader issues such as the core competencies with respect to records management with special reference to e‐records management.

The prime objectives were to overview the current state of active and passive record keeping in the Government of Canada and identify the core competencies required to build effective record keeping infrastructures in the digital environment that has emerged in most government institutions. During a period of one month, the author was able to visit only selected archives in Toronto and Ottawa. The archives in other parts of Canada are not included in this study due to time limit.

The paper presents a study of the archival system in Canada and its role and contribution towards promoting a knowledge society in Canada.

The Center for Electronic Records of the National Archives and Records Administration was established in 1988 as the custodial unit for the permanent electronic records of the U.S. federal government. The program for the long‐term preservation of electronic (or machine‐readable) records by the National Archives goes back to 1968, and the acting archivist of the United States has recently acknowledged the thirtieth anniversary of the first formal appraisal of electronic records. This article will highlight both the Center for Electronic Records' program and the various levels of access to information about the records in its custody.

This paper aims to explore the role played by the National Archives of South Africa in human rights promotion and protection. The study examined the challenges that archivists encounter when undertaking archival functions, such as acquisition, appraisal and access provision, that contribute to forming documentary archives crucial for human rights promotion and protection.

A review of literature dealing with acquisition, appraisal and access was used in this research. It was supplemented with interviews.

This paper provides recommendations of benefits in the field of archives management with a focus on the areas of acquisition, appraisal and access. The transformational discourse in the jurisdiction of archives management challenges archival institutions to be active players in selecting historical and cultural archives’ significance that is significant in human rights protections. However, despite judicial requirements that recommend the importance of archives, there is evidence that archival functions such as appraisal, acquisition and access are not being fully used, resulting in national archives institutions that are subject to irregularities that contribute to an unbalanced archives collection.

The paper was limited only to the National Archives of South Africa.

The paper makes practical implications concerning the acquisition, appraisal and providing access to human rights records.

Sufficient funding resource allocation ought to be provided to advance human rights promotion.

This paper offers informed recommendations to address the challenges of acquisition, appraisal and access provision of archive materials. The availability of archives materials reinforces the community by aiding to protect legal rights and prevent human rights violations. It was, thus, necessary to establish whether the National Archives of South Africa is actively building the archives collections that are important for human rights promotion and protection.

This study aims to assess the role of the National Archives of South Africa (NARSSA) in promoting the preservation and management of private archives.

This study used the qualitative method, and data was collected through unstructured questionnaires and interviews. In addition, purposive sampling was used to collect data from the selected archivist.

The study found that the NARSSA raised awareness on the preservation of private archives and is also in the process of reviewing the National Archives and Records Service Act 43 of 1996 to promote the preservation and management of private archives. The study also revealed that the role of the NARSSA in enforcing compliance with Section 14 of the National Archives and Records Service Act 43 of 1996 for the proper management and coordination of private archives was ineffective because of a lack of coordination, infrastructure, training and development.

The qualitative data was obtained from three participants with the NARSSA and two selected from private archives. The sample is small to generalise results. The public–private cooperation in archives management is limited, and this is proved by the severely limited number of participants in the research. Furthermore, the private archive in this study is limited to the liberation movement archives institutions in South Africa.

This study could work as a stimulus for potential approaches to conduct further research on the possible kinds of cooperation between private–public archival organisations.

The study is innovative, in that there are very few research investigations that focused on the cooperation between private and public archives in the African region and especially in South Africa.

The article makes a significant contribution to the area of private–public archival organisations, especially in South Africa. It will expand the knowledge on private–public archive cooperation and management in South Africa and the rest of the African continent.

Archives and records are important resources for individuals, organizations and the country. The academic archives are created and maintained for the effective execution of university educational and corporate functions. The archives management practices in universities are being studied in the developed countries; however, a scarcity of empirical research is observed in the context of developing countries, for instance, Pakistan. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess the archives management practices performed in the archival units of University of the Punjab (UoP), Lahore, in association with the successful execution of university educational functions.

A structured survey questionnaire was developed to collect responses from the record-keepers and archives monitoring staff using a complete enumerative (census) approach. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS 23.0 in addition to structural equation modeling (SEM) run in AMOS 22v.

The findings of this study revealed an inconsistency regarding the policies and procedures, arrangement and filing records and access and retrieval due to the practice of self-developed procedures in the UoP archival units. Although archives management practices have significant impact on university academic as well as research-related functions, however, there is lack of centralized and standardized practices for archiving records in the UoP. Lack of professional/trained staff and policy document are key limitations in building systematic and standardized archives management system in academic intuitions, particularly in the UoP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study in Pakistan that has explored archives management practices used in university archives. It also contributes theoretically and methodologically through the underpinnings of archival principles in association with university functions and developing a validated scale to explore archives management practices in universities. The findings of this study may be helpful for the concerned bodies, university administrations and archives managers to establish, manage and improve the academic archives systematically.

This study aims to investigate a framework for implementation of legislative framework governing records management throughout the life cycle in the Limpopo provincial government of South Africa.

This quantitative multi-method study used a semi-structured questionnaire, document analysis and interviews to collect data. The dominant approach was quantitative, with some support from limited qualitative data, which served to clarify the statistical data. No sampling method was applied, as the study targeted the entire population of 135 records management participants from the provincial departments with the questionnaire, while nine participants from provincial archives participated in interviews.

The study revealed that the role of the provincial archives in enforcing compliance with legislative frameworks for the proper management of records was always disrupted by a lack of key resources such as staffing, for inspecting and training records-creating departments and working resources at the departmental levels.

The findings will contribute to the field in respect of future studies into compliance with records management legislation, and the proposed framework may be applied as a theoretical basis for, or part of, a conceptual framework.

The study will serve as a resource or benchmark for archivists and records management professionals in the industry, as they count amongst the policymakers who find ways of monitoring, evaluating and enforcing compliance with the legislation governing proper records management.

The proper implementation of recommendations from this study will lead to significant improvements in the management of records with enduring value, allowing them to finally be transferred to an archival repository to serve the public interest as heritage, national memory, or resources for researchers and authors, amongst others.

The study proposes a framework for implementation of legislation governing records management with greater ease in the Limpopo provincial government of South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a study carried out pertaining to the Malaysian archivists' knowledge and skills in managing electronic records (ER).

The main data collection has been gathered through survey questionnaires. Quantitative data were gathered from a total of 41 archivists at the National Archives of Malaysia.

The insufficiency of education and training received by the archivists contributed to the archivists' limited knowledge and skills to support their roles and responsibilities to manage ER. The archivists' limited knowledge and skills on ER management (ERM) prevented them from implementing the policies and standard procedures on ERM which was part of their main responsibilities.

This study would be useful in identifying the required knowledge and skills for the archivists and suitable education and training for them to acquire such knowledge and skills to manage ER.

This is the first study of its kind which deals with the archivists' competencies in managing ER in the Malaysian Government.

Recently, increasing importance has been given to electronic records in China, despite the lack of understanding that institutions and organizations have regarding the security status of electronic records preservation. Wuhan, the largest city in central China, serves as a case to investigate the preservation security of electronic records. Challenges to security are summarized, and solutions are proposed to support policy-developing and operational guidance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The Delphi method is applied to analyze the advice of nine experts, select survey items and design questionnaires. Data are collected from 34 archives in Wuhan through field surveys, oral interviews and e-mails, which are analyzed and illustrated with three representative cases.

Main achievements of electronic records preservation are concluded in the electronic records management system, carrier types and storage formats, and data backup. Problems are summarized as a lack of awareness and capability of defending against security risks, disaster recovery capability, and understanding of electronic record characteristics. Solutions are proposed as follows: carrying out regular security risk evaluation, adopting new technologies, implementing application-level backup, strengthening technology-related education and attracting more IT talent to join the archive discipline. In addition, it is critical to promote an understanding of the characteristics of electronic records.

This paper investigates the security status of electronic records in central China by surveys and case studies. Critical problems and corresponding solutions are raised to support policy-developing and operational guidance for the research and practice of all kinds of institutions that implement electronic records preservation.