Colección: Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía (RIB)
Número: 1-4
Título: 1997
Sección: Artículos / Articles
Introduction
The National Archives of the United States, since the establishment of the
Data Archives Staff in 1968, has been involved in the appraisal, accessioning,
and preservation of records having long-term historical value created and
maintained in electronic form by federal agencies. To date, almost 20,000
individual data files have been transferred from federal agencies to the National
Archives. Overall, the Center for Electronic Records maintains electronic
computer files appraised as having continuing value created by the Congress,
the Courts, the Executive Office of the President, numerous presidential commissions,
and nearly 100 bureaus, departments, and other components of executive branch
agencies and their contractors.
Reference services on electronic records provided by the Center include providing
copies of data files on 9—track magnetic tape or 3480—class tape
cartridge. Documentation for electronic records is also available, generally
in paper form. Copies of records in electronic form and documentation may
be obtained by researchers on a cost-recovery basis. A listing of approximately
7,000 of the data files in the custody of the Center, as well as other descriptive
materials about the Center, are available either in printed form, from an
anonymous FTP site, or from the National Archive Gopher server (National Archives,
1992a, 1992b; Center for Electronic Records, 1993a, 1993c; FTP to FTP.CU.NIH.GOV;
directory NARA-ELECTRONIC). A number of subject oriented articles have also
been published about the holdings of the Center, including articles describing
records relevant to women’s studies, environmental studies, and the Vietnam
conflict (Adams, 1990, 1991, 1992).
Researchers interested in studies conducted by, or statistics collected by,
the United States government in or about Latin America may consider the holdings
of the Center for Electronic Records. Some of these records are briefly described
in David (1992) and Center for Electronic Records (1993b). For purposes of
this paper, Latin America is broadly defined as those countries, possessions,
or territories in South America, Central America (including Mexico), and the
Caribbean. The holdings of the Center for Electronic Records related to Latin
American studies may be classified into four groups: attitudinal data, trade
and transportation data, health and social service data, and other electronic
records relevant to research on Latin America.