Duff on Power of Warrant

• Research Design: Literary Warrant Analysis 

• Over time, society established requirements for records and recordkeeping - these requirements were promoted through laws, regulations, standards, customs, best practices

•  Six requirements for recordkeeping systems 1. date 2. name of person who made record or gave the information for the record 3. consistency of record creation - system regularly used to carry out business 4. records regularly created to document a particular transaction or event 5. records under the care of a qualified custodian 6. method of preparation needs to be trustworthy.

• IT field promulgates standards, adherence to them is voluntary. ODA (Open Document Architecture) and SGML - dictate different methods for formatting a document; EDI (Electronic Data Interchange - ensures records are accurate). Also ISO9000 - set of standards relating to keeping adequate records documenting design and production of products - specify that the org. recordkeeping systems capture and maintain the context of records.

• Uses of Warrant: U of Pitt. Elec. Recordkeeping project suggested that electronic recordkeeping should derive from authoritative sources, such as law, customs, standards and professional best practices accepted by society and codified in the literature of different professions. Duff was a member of this project, and conducted a search of these sources and made a compendium of statements that described or explained the requirements for capturing, maintaining, and using records over time.

• Called these statements - "literary warrant" (the vocabulary used for the above statements relate to the recordkeeping descriptions/explanations found in the authoritative literature of different professions - their customs, standards and professional best practices.)

• archival requirements for recordkeeping have very little authority as no authoritative agencies as standard boards or professional organizations have yet to endorse; few archivists have authority to insist that organizations follow...

• the project team suggested archivists use these statements (taken from the different professions' own literature on best practice/standards) as 'literary warrant'

• Duff's hypotheses to test: 1. Does a functional requirement accompanied by literary warrant receive a rating of importance that is significantly different from the rating given a functional requirement itself? 2. Is one type of warrant - legal, auditing, IT literature more influential than others? 3. Are there significant differences in the rating of importance of the functional requirements assigned by different groups? 4. Do functional requirements accompanied by literary warrant from a subject's professional lit. receive significantly higher ratings of importance than func. req. accompanied by warrant from another profession?

• 60 subjects recruited from law, auditing and IT.

• Results of hypotheses test 1. evaluations varied. 2. functional requirements with legal warrant were highest, than auditing, then IT. 3. ten of the requirements received highest mean score from IT, then lawyers, then auditors. 4. Yes.

• archivists could increase their credibility by highlighting the strong connection between archival requirements and specifications for recordkeeping delineated in the law, professional standards and best practices for a profession. Connect recordkeeping practices to particular warrant.