Greetings, all, from one who has been lurking but not lost for the past 18 months, and before that was better known on the A&A listserv.  Laid off from my jazz archivist position in Moscow, Idaho at the end of September 2008, I found work as a records manager/archivist/librarian with the International Boundary and Water Commission (El Paso, TX) at the end of March 2009.  Lots of challenges in this job, rewriting our records retention schedule and communications directive among them.  The present ones date from 1990 and say little about electronic records. 
 
A particular problem is the lack of a standard for digital photographs or scans made by IBWC personnel or our contractors.  Documentation of photographs was already trending badly here, after about 1975, and with the advent of digital cameras, things have only gotten worse.  Envelopes of photos or carousels of slides bearing only a project name have at least a physical presence on the shelves.  Their digital equivalents are currently scattered. Found, they are likely as not mostly just camera codes.
 
So it is that I can find glass plate negatives  of a border survey in the early 1890s, at the National Archives, or carefully organized and annotated photo albums of 1930's flood control projects, here or in our field offices, but cannot find the photos for a project from five or ten years back.  Or, as I said, finding the file, find there is little metadata. Have any of you, working in other federal agencies, a directive or standard operating procedure by which personnel and contractors are supposed to abide when taking new photographs, or scanning old ones, in this modern era?  Something based, maybe, on the NARA guidelines for such materials http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/digital-photo-records.html. If so, would you share it with me?   I'm on digest so I would appreciate a direct response.
 
Just following orders on the look of my signature block, sincerely,
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
Michael Tarabulski, Library Tech.       
IBWC, U.S. Section 
Headquarters
(915) 832-4146              
(915) 832-4190 Fax  
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