Confronted with the task of managing ever-increasing amounts of web-based information, educational institutions like Duke University are adopting website content management systems (CMS) to help manage these electronic records on a large scale. The use of CMS in higher education presents institutional archivists and records managers with both opportunities and challenges in ensuring that CMS-based web records are archived and preserved correctly. This project examines the use of CMS at educational institutions around the country, and will gather data from information technology professionals (specifically, CMS administrators) and archivists on CMS usage/planned usage, CMS applications that are being employed to control versioning and web record life cycles, rules that are in place to guide the life cycle of web records, and how those rules are established. In addition, the project examines in depth the CMS recently put to use at Duke University (Cascade Server) and develops best practices for transferring certain web content to an archival environment.
Project Team:
- Jill A. Katte, Archivist for Student Life & Technical Services, Duke University
- David W. Mitchell, CRM
- Megan O'Connell, CMS Project Research Assistant, Duke University
This project is possible thanks to funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission's Electronic Records Research Fellowship Program.