>>I'm going to share them at the risk of being burned at the stake.<<
I don't believe I will be burning anyone at the stake today but do have
a couple of observations.

>>What if we could store an entire year's electronic records, including
emails, on/in something that takes up the physical space of the head of
a pin?<<

Not sure what space has to do with it.  I have lots of space in my sock
drawer, that doesn't mean I am going to save all of my old socks.

>>And what if we had search/access software that was so powerful and
intuitive that we could locate the items we needed within
seconds...every time!<<
I will relate this back to my old sock drawer.  Finding the old ones
wouldn't be a problem. But why would I want to.  What value is it to be
able to locate something without value.

>>And what if...before it was stored each item was auto-converted to PDF
or some other long term format?<<
This would be good.  The old socks would be "auto-washed" or
"dry-cleaned" before they were returned to the drawer for permanent
storage.

>>And what if...before it was converted and stored each item was given a
swag of compliant metadata (maybe with no user intervention needed)?<<
Even better, each sock would be carefully examined and any holes or
other issue (size, loss of elastic, mismatched, one from my nephew I
somehow picked up on a fishing trip) would be addressed prior to the
auto-conversion mentioned above.  Please note that I still do not intend
to use them but..."just in case"

>>If (when?) it does become cheap and easy to store everything
forever...will we still argue for retention/disposal schedules and
sentencing/disposal programs?<<
Absolutely.  How else will I be able to dispose of the panty hose that
somehow made it into my drawer?  JUST KIDDING!


>>In my days as an archivist I had many an argument with passionate
researchers and historians who thought it impossible for me or my
colleagues to make decisions about which 1% (or 5% or 25%) of the
government records I appraised would be useful for research in 10 years
or 50 years or 100 years because I couldn't possibly predict the future.
My argument was always..."well of course it would be nice to keep
everything but that is simply physically & financially impossible so we
do the best we can".<<
That is the problem with archivists, their training does not prepare
them to predict the future.  As a records manager I have that ability.
Researchers and historians will be researching the records I send to
archives...everything else will be either destroyed or in my sock
drawer.

>>How will an archivist argue with a historian when the above scenario
becomes a real possibility?  How will a records manager argue with the
IT manager that we need a disposal program?<<

By the time the scenario above becomes reality, we will have no
historians or archivists.  There will be laws that prevent anyone from
looking at my sock collection due the myriad laws protecting the privacy
of socks and the folks that might wear them.

Just a thought.

Bill R

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