Dr. Franks is a Certified Archivist, Certified Records Manager, and Information Governance Professional. She is a Fellow of ARMA International, and she recently completed the BTA Certified Blockchain Business Foundations requirements. Until May 2021, Franks, SJSU Professor Emerita, coordinated the Master’s Degree in Archives and Records Administration (MARA). Her research interests lie in archives, records management, information governance, digital preservation, and emerging technologies (including blockchain technologies and AI). She has presented at numerous conferences on those and related topics. She established the SJSU Virtual Center for Archives and Records Administration (VCARA) in Second Life.
Franks authored Records and Information Management (2013, 2018) and co-edited the Encyclopedia of Archival Science (2015), Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments: Archives, Museums, and Libraries (2016), the International Directory of National Archives (2018), the Encyclopedia of Archival Writers, 1515-2015 (2018). In 2021, she completed her most recent project, sole editor of The Handbook of Archival Practice. She was a member of the InterPARES Trust research project (2013-2019) where she lead two teams: 1) social media and trust in government and 2) records retention and disposition in a cloud environment and is a member of the current InterPARES AI project (2021-2026) where she leads two studies: 1) Employing AI for Retention and Disposition in Trusted Digital Recordkeeping Repositories (TDRRs) and 2) Preserving AI Techniques as Paradata.