Tracking national resources

User stories from the knowledge front

While storing national resources is its mandate, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration , (NARA) also is responsible for providing ready, public access to the treasures it safeguards. Consequently, NARA has implemented an application, developed by Open Text and Impact Innovations Group, to track its records. Called the Master Location Register (MLR), the application tracks information about the storage location of a significant segment of the archival records in NARA's custody.

"One of the primary requirements for developing the MLR," says Jay Eigenbrode, project manager at NARA, "was that we needed to identify and utilize a commercially available technology with components demonstrated to be both functional and extensive." After searching the market, NARA chose Livelink from Open Text.

NARA archivists will use the MLR to locate and track the physical movement of textual holdings in its two primary locations--buildings in Washington, D.C., and College Park, Md.—that house more than 1.6 million cubic feet of records. The application must trace the physical location of approximately 1.4 million containers at those two sites. Open Text and Impact Innovations built on the functionality of Livelink to address NARA's specific database and legacy requirements.

"NARA required very powerful search and retrieval functionality," says John Evans, senior technical leader, Impact Innovations. "We were able to successfully tailor the Livelink product to enable our client to more effectively plan and manage the physical movement of the millions of records for which they are responsible."

Following a request for information, NARA archivists can use the MLR to quickly search for the physical location of the relevant resource and determine physical space usage to plan and manage the physical movement of records