The term "capture" is appearing more and more in conversation and in
the literature.  Most recently the word appeared in an email from
Rick Barry to the Arcan-l listserv in connection with the Indiana
University Electronic Records Project.  The sentence read in part:

"the project...addresses the capture of electronic records from
transaction-based systems"

My question is, what exactly does "capture" mean?  I have heard it
used in a number of different contexts and am unsure as to its
essential meaning as a result.

It is not included in the SAA archives glossary (1992), nor in the
ARMA glossary (2000).  I checked on the web and the only definition I
found was this one on the Webopedia tech glossary site:

"To save a particularly state of a program.  The term capture often
refers to saving the information currently displayed on a display
screen.  You can caputre the screen to a printer or to a file.  The
act of saving a display screen is called a screen capture.  Video
capture refers to storing video images in a computer.

The term capture is also used to describe the recording of keystrokes
during the definition of a macro."

Do you agree with this definition or do you have another (better)
one?  I would appreciate comments on this.

Thanks.

Leith Peterson
Archives/Records Consultant, London, Ontario