HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
Above , a box contains historical records of the 1st Cavalry Division ’ s 2006 – 2007 operations in Iraq , which were collected by the deployed 90th Military History Detachment . ( Photo by Maj . Glynn Garcia )
Right , the Communications – Electronics Command ( CECOM ) Historical Collection is located in the Historical Office at Aberdeen Proving Ground , Maryland , and consists of documents , still photos , films , recordings ( audio and video ), and miscellaneous outdated media ( e . g ., floppy disks , safety films , slides , and microfiche ). The collection also has a small military history reference library ( approximately two thousand volumes ). ( Photo courtesy of U . S . Army CECOM )
general was responsible for records management , but by the 1980s , the field of information management “ saw little distinction between communications and information .” 11 As communication became digital , the Army transferred responsibility for managing the data carried on the networks to those running the networks . Unfortunately , information management and records management doctrine proved difficult to integrate . Additionally , the Army eliminated many trained and deployable records managers as a result of Army-wide force structure changes that rebalanced the Army ’ s tooth-to-tail ratio . The records managers who remained became isolated from the units they supported as their activities were consolidated at the corps level and above .
In 1986 , the ACSIM inherited an effort to replace The Army Functional Files System General Provisions ( AR 340-18-1 , now obsolete ), the Army ’ s paper-based , 1960s-era records management system . The Army Functional Files System had served the
Army reasonably well during Vietnam and itself was an update of the War Department Decimal Filing System , which helped preserve records from World War II and the Korean War . Excellent operational records from all three of these conflicts are available at the National Archives . The successor to AR 340-18-1 was AR 24-400-2 , The Modern Army Recordkeeping System ( MARKS ) ( now obsolete ). 12 Unfortunately , MARKS was poorly conceived and only worked well at the Department of the Army and major Army command levels . It did not serve well the needs of field units during combat operations .
As units rapidly redeployed and in some cases inactivated after the Gulf War , the U . S . Army Information Systems Command issued a series of misunderstood and contradictory instructions that directed field units to ignore the guidance in MARKS and submit records directly to it . This confusion led to many operational records from the Gulf War being misfiled , misplaced , or simply never retired . It required
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