Acronymical Obnoxiousness
Jennie Ferris
Fellow SIS-ers, you have not seen acronyms until you have plunged the depths of the Code of Federal Regulations. Despite the ingrained fearlessness that I developed in response to the acronym barrage that seemed to define year one of my MLIS studies, this past June I found myself quaking surreptitiously in my sandals as I attempted to distinguish the deceptively similar acronyms that can be found in the Code of Federal Regulations. Public Non-Transient Non-Community (NTNC) water supplies were not to be confused with Public Transient Non-Community (TNC) water supplies. No, these two water supplies and their respective acronyms were quite different. As I struggled to differentiate between the significance of these acronyms and what they might signify for the records that the state was legally required to create and receive, I realized that my defense against the acronym was not yet strong enough.
Let me start at the beginning, the first surprise of my state archives internship was when I discovered that the archives in my home state is currently working to follow the functional analysis and macroappraisal practices that were developed by the (former) National Archives of Canada. Through this approach, the state agencies were intentionally involved in the development of records inventories. I found this method to be thoroughly refreshing; after all, the state agencies were the end users. If they didn’t understand the purpose and rationale behind a tool they had to use, why would they have a desire to use it?
I began the records management adventures by researching statute, federal codes, and agency rules to determine what records were legally required to be generated, to help establish draft records inventories for specific divisions within the Agency of Natural Resources’ Department of Environmental Conservation [That's the ANR's DEC, for short!]. Through this review of applicable legal requirements, I developed a sense of the functions and activities of the divisions. I came to better understand the purpose of a given division, including the types of activities it carries out to fulfill its purpose, and the resulting records types produced.
After establishing the aims of the division, and identifying the legal requirements relating to the records generated, I met with agency staff to discuss, confirm, and hone our understanding of their activities, and the resulting records. For example, while the United States Code (USC) could claim that the state government is responsible for monitoring TNCs on a quarterly basis, this claim has little practical value until it is clarified that this monitoring consists of State Form 251 that TNCs must submit on a quarterly basis. By making a “use for” reference in the scope note of the different records types included on each division’s records inventory, links can be drawn between legal requirements, record types, the division-specific records and the activities those records support. Through this collaborative process, I was able to communicate how this work would benefit the division, while division staff was able to respond to questions and sometimes demystify particularly obtuse passages of legalese. Both the division staff and I came to an improved understanding of how common vocabulary had division-specific implications.
In theory, functional analysis can be a brilliant idea. In practice, my forays this summer involved time-consuming research, communication, meetings with agency staff, clarification, revision, and an end result that, if not brilliant, was thankfully pretty darn decent. As for my use of acronyms, by the end of the summer I would occasionally sling around acronyms with the best of them, to the slight annoyance of my acquaintances and family. Fortunately, my folks helped me maintain perspective by indicating, in no uncertain terms, that not all the world had a desire to speak like the Code of Federal Regulations or the Water Supply Rule. In other words, my acronymical obnoxiousness was pretty short-lived.