1. This article has evolved over the past four years. I first presented these ideas in the keynote address called “Interfaces with Time” at the Australian Society of Annual Meeting in Freemantle on 7 August 1998. Since then, my thinking about archives, memory and interfaces has progressed as has the broader archival and historical discourse on these matters. I would like to acknowledge insights and support from several colleagues who have pushed my thinking and helped me become more confident in the ideas expressed here. Over the years I have benefited from discussions with Fran Blouin, Richard Cox, Wendy Duff, Bob Frost, Verne Harris, and Eric Ketelaar. I have learned a great deal about interface design from my human-computer interaction colleagues at the University of Michigan, especially Judith Olson and George Furnas. I also thank Terry Cook and Joan Schwartz for their thorough and helpful comments on the pervious draft of this article. Perhaps a new cohort is in formation.
2. David F. Noble was one of the first historians to examine how design decisions become imbedded in technological systems and objects. Although Noble did not use the concept of “interfaces”per se, he initiated a substantive debate in the history of technology and in science studies about the ways that engineers and designers exercise power through design decisions. See David F. Noble,America by Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977). Others who have pursued this question include Donald A. Norman,The Design of Everyday Things (New York: Doubleday, 1990); Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, in L. Winner (ed.),The Whale and the Reactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 19–39.
3. David Bearman, “Record-Keeping Systems”,Archivaria 36 (Autumn 1993): 16–23; David Bearman and Margaret Hedstrom, “Reinventing Archives for Electronic Records: Alternative Service Delivery Options”,Electronic Records Management Program Strategies, Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report, No. 18 (1993): 82–98. Sue McKemmish and Frank Upward (eds.),Archival Documents: Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping (Melbourne: Ancora Press 1993); Terry Cook, “Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-Custodial and Post-Modernist Age”,Archives and Manuscripts 22 (2) (1994): 300–328; Richard J Cox, “The Record: Is It Evolving?”,The Records and Retrieval Report 10 (3) (1994): 1–16; Luciana Duranti and Heather MacNeil, “The Protection of the Integrity of Electronic Records: An Overview of the UBC-MAS Research Project”,Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 46–67; and Linda J.Henry, “Schellenberg in Cyberspace”,American Archivist 16 (2) (Fall 1998): 309–327.
4. The question of how organizations will capture, structure, organize, and preserve electronic records, including those with long-term value, has been the topic of numerous conferences, programme sessions, research projects, reports, and articles. For recent examples, see Advisory Committee for the Coordination of Information Systems (ACCIS),Management of Electronic Records: Issues And Guidelines (New York: United Nations, 1990); U.S. National Historical Publications and Records Commission,Research Issues in Electronic Records, Report Of The Working Meeting (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1991); S. Yorke (ed.),Playing for Keeps: Proceedings of an Electronic Records Management Conference Hosted by the Australian Archives (Canberra: Australian Archives, 1995); Luciana Duranti and Heather MacNeil, “The Protection of the Integrity of Electronic Records: An Overview of the UBCMAS Research Project”,Archivaria; Wendy Duff, “Ensuring the Preservation of Reliable Evidence: A Research Project Funded by the NHPRC”,Archivaria 42 (Fall 1996): 28–45; Office of Official Publications of the European CommissionProceedings of the DLM-Forum On Electronic Records, Brussels, 18–20 December 1996 (Luxembourg: European Commission, 1997); Margaret Hedstrom and Francis X. Blouin, Electronic Records Research and Development, Report of an Invitational Conference Held at The University Of Michigan, 28 and 29 June 1996 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1997); and American Society for Information Science,Bulletin 23 (5) (June/July 1997), entire issues devoted to electronic record keeping; and Heather MacNeil, “Providing the Grounds for Trust: Developing Conceptual Requirements for the Long-Term Preservation of Authentic Electronic Records”,Archivaria 50 (Fall 2000): 52–78.
5. Margaret Hedstrom, “The Forms and Meanings of Virtual Artifacts”, unpublished paper presented at the Sawyer Seminar on Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 11 October 2000.