Record-Surface Visibility and the Infrastructural Rendering of Exported Administrative Records (Preprint)Yang, Y. This preprint introduces the Record-Surface Visibility (RSV) framework for analysing how relational administrative structures are transformed when digital administrative systems are rendered into exported documentary artefacts. Administrative information systems maintain complex relational infrastructures—including routing histories, branching workflows, parallel identifiers, and versioned attachments—yet these structures rarely circulate outside their system-native environments. Instead, they are exported as stabilised documentary artefacts such as PDF bundles, email compilations, and compressed attachment archives for purposes of disclosure, audit, and archival use. This study examines a multi-bundle administrative disclosure corpus exceeding 250 pages of documentation together with associated attachment archives. Using a black-box analytical approach, it analyses observable structural characteristics of the exported artefact without requiring access to backend systems. The analysis identifies a systematic phenomenon termed representational contraction at the export boundary, where relational navigability becomes compressed into stabilised documentary surfaces. To evaluate this, the RSV framework is operationalised through five diagnostic dimensions: Identifier Continuity, Metadata Exposure, Pathway Representation, Attachment Lineage Visibility, and Format Integration. Application of the framework yields a very low average visibility score (0.2 / 2.0), indicating severe compression of relational structures in the exported artefact. The study conceptualises export not as a neutral transmission but as an infrastructural rendering process that shapes the visibility of administrative activity once records leave their native system environments. Preliminary editorial assessment by the Journal of Documentation indicated that the manuscript is of publishable quality, though better suited to a different journal scope. This work is presented as both a conceptual contribution and an evidentiary record of a specific disclosure context, with all referenced materials preserved as DOI-linked archival objects for verification and traceability. This document is released as a research preprint and has not undergone peer review.
Y. Yang (Sun,) studied this question.