On the Record, All the Time: Audiovisual Evidence Management in the 21st Century

We are currently witnessing the explosive growth of audiovisual evidence generated by widespread deployment of surveillance cameras, smartphones, and bodycams in law enforcement. With this growth comes new and emergent intersections of policy, technology and record-keeping in contemporary society. Library and Information Science (LIS) practitioners' expertise in the ethical management of public records has renewed relevance for audiovisual evidence, which requires complex tradeoffs between the competing demands of public access, privacy, cost, and collective memory. This paper reports on the IMLS-funded "On the Record, All the Time" project, which brings together leaders from LIS education, records management, law enforcement, civic governance, and policymaking communities to define the challenges of, and set specific priorities for, the management and preservation of new forms of audiovisual evidence. The project places particular emphasis on identification of core competencies for managers of audiovisual evidence. It also seeks to facilitate information exchange and radical collaboration with key stakeholders--notably, law enforcement and criminal justice practitioners--with whom the LIS field has previously had little contact, and to open new areas of research and professional possibility for LIS program graduates.