A global crisis is looming in information management that threatens the accuracy, safekeeping and authenticity of vital electronic data.

Records of vast historical, legal, social and economic significance are under threat according to Charles Sturt University’s first Professor of Library and Information Management Ross Harvey. "The potential to lose vital information with a computer upgrade is huge – including instances where the technology on storing and accessing that information shifts direction," he warned.

Professor Harvey said that as a result of the information technology revolution, records traditionally preserved on paper were now kept digitally. "We’ve come to a crisis point where we depend heavily on electronic records and we have to find new ways to protect them or we’re not only going to lose heritage and memories, but vital data needed to maintain our health and safety," he said.

"This presents worldwide dilemmas as to how we can ensure that electronic business, government and personal records that we have to and want to keep won’t be lost when a computer is upgraded, or if someone deliberately or accidentally changes that data. There are solutions, but some of these are expensive, and the work needs to be prioritised to get critical jobs done before it’s too late."

Pharmaceutical testing results, national defence and intelligence reports, and mining exploration survey data are being considered as examples of electronic records that could be in jeopardy.

Professor Harvey said such fears had already been realised in some sectors. He said American authorities were battling to retrieve data that pinpoints the location of hazardous waste dumps. Australia’s earliest detailed seismic survey results – worth millions to mining, mineral and exploration interests – were also vulnerable he said, as much of the information was stored on magnetic tape, and there was only one machine left in the world, in London, which could read it.

An international team of archivists and library professionals is addressing the dangers identified in the InterPARES Project – the International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems. Professor Harvey is part of the four-member Australian InterPARES team, and as such has just returned from the project’s latest conference held in Canada last week.

Options being explored and problems presented to the team will be part of his address to a public lecture delivered in Wagga Wagga tomorrow (Wednesday 23 February), An Amnesiac Society? The problems of keeping digital data for use in the future. The event is part of the CSU Public Lecture Series 2000, and will be held in the Wagga Wagga Civic Centre (Baylis St) at 6pm.