4. RESULTADOS
4.5 Recomendaciones operativas y de mantenimiento del tanque para garantizar la
Among participants there was the feeling that there is no perfect method for email archiving. No single tool or policy will work for every institution and institutions should find what works best for their needs. Ainsley, one of the participants who had been working on email archiving at her institution for the past ten years, advised archivists at other institutions to “just go, just do it” when it comes to email archiving. She follows the advice of a mentor who told her, “Don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good.” Adding to this sentiment, Ainsley noted “Don’t be afraid to fail and don’t think that you have to have everything figured out before you jump in because you’re going to figure it
38 out along the way.” Sohler believes that “there’s not a one size fits all” for email
archiving. He expanded upon this thought, saying “I feel like it’s tempting to think that because email is so easy to isolate as a unique kind of file format. So, you can go, ‘Oh, so the way you solve email is with ePADD or something like that.” Sohler emphasized that, in terms of email archiving, “there’s just different ways to do it and you got to pick the one that’s right for you.” Costa, whose institution built their own email archiving system, echoed Sohler’s point, recommending that archivists “be flexible” and remember that “not everything is going to be one size fits all.” Costa also recommends talking with peers, “I feel like everybody’s in the same boat, so if you keep talking to folks, maybe you’ll figure out if somebody is doing something that can help you solve your issue.” Brooks also mentioned the importance of peers when creating a creating a plan for email archiving. Brooks increased her email archiving knowledge by attending conferences, developing professional relationships, and joining working groups. She commented that she has cultivated list of people “who I can reach out to, who I know I can reach out to and say, ‘Hey, is anyone doing this? What are you guys doing? How are you doing this? What's working?’”
39
Conclusion
As discussed in the Methodology section, this study is not a comprehensive examination of email archiving. Interviewing curators was not within this paper’s scope but curator perspectives on email archiving should be explored in future studies. Curators could provide more insight into donor relations and their conversations with donors regarding email. Future studies could also incorporate the two-person interview format, which I conducted with Dalton and Costa, by interviewing the curator who acquires the email along with the archivist who processes the email. However, when interviewing two people at the same time, there is the risk that participants may not be as candid as if they were interviewed separately. Another future study could examine why institutions have not implemented email archiving polices. I received several responses from potential participants informing me that they have not yet begun email archiving. A valuable perspective may be to hear from archivists on what factors have been blocking them from email archiving. This perspective may encourage more effective and sustainable tools and workflows that do not require every repository to build their own email archiving system.
The data analysis illustrated that email presents many challenges for archives, however, despite these challenges, archivists are collecting, processing, preserving and making email accessible in ways that work best for their respective institutions. Email is an important record and historical document. It is critical for archives to be actively capturing this type of correspondence. Archivists may be aided by AI tools but ultimately a human review needed to make the final decisions. If they have not already, institutional
40 repositories should start pondering strategies for email archiving. As participants in the study emphasized, perfect is not possible when it comes to processing email. You will inevitably make mistakes as you test different email archiving workflows. Participants embraced the fact that working email and born-digital objects is exciting and dynamic because people are still figuring out how to best preserve these types of materials. When thinking about email archiving, the best approach may be to view the format’s challenges as opportunities for experimentation and exploration.
41
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Appendix A. Recruitment Email Scripts
Dear [participant’s name],My name is Clare Carlson and I am a second-year MSLS student at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I am writing to ask if you would be interested in participating in an interview over Zoom for my Master’s Paper. I am conducting research on appraising and processing email collections. I am interested in your experiences as [position title at institution]. The purpose of the research is to explore email appraisal strategies and processing workflows at universities within the United States. Your participation will involve one informal interview that will last between 45 minutes to an hour.
This research has no known risks. A copy of the paper will be ingested to the Carolina Digital Repository at UNC Chapel Hill. The interview data that I collect will be kept confidential and will be destroyed upon completion of the project in May 2020. I will anonymize the names of all individuals and organizations involved, such that my paper will not include individual data in a form by which you could be identified.
If you are not involved in working with email collections, I would greatly appreciate if you could let me know the appropriate person to contact at your institution. Or feel free to forward my email to the appropriate person.
If you are willing to participate in an interview or have any questions or concerns, please contact me at [email protected].
Thank you for considering my request. Sincerely,
Clare Carlson MSLS 2020
Digital Processing Assistant | Wilson Special Collections | UNC Libraries
Digital Archives Graduate Assistant | Special Collections Research Center | NC State University Libraries
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Appendix B. Table of
Participants
Name (pseudonym) Institution Position
Catherine Ainsley Private university in
Massachusetts
Digital archivist
Luke Sohler Public university in
Michigan
Digital initiatives archivist
Leah Brooks Public university in
California
Digital archivist
Glenn Walsh Public university in Ohio Digital preservation
librarian
Evan Hawkins Public university in
Pennsylvania
Digital preservation librarian
Harper Dalton Private university in
Massachusetts
Electronic records archivist
Heather Costa Private university in
Massachusetts
Collection services archivist
47
Appendix C. Interview Guide
Participants position/role at institution• Could you please provide an overview of the tasks and responsibilities involved in your position at [institution]?
• Could you tell me a little bit about the organizational structure of [department]?
• What role do you have in processing email archives? Who else, such as curators or technical services, is involved in appraising and preserving email archives?
Pre-appraisal activities – selection and acquisition
• When (and why) did [institution] make the determination to acquire email for preservation?
• Has [institution] policies for acquiring email changed over time?
• Could you give me examples of the types of email accounts your repository collects and why these accounts are collected?
• What challenges are involved in determining the value of email and what accounts should be collected?
• How does the institution communicate with donors about preserving email?
• How are the email records captured and transferred to the repository?
Processing activities - Accessioning, appraisal and review, arrangement and description, and discovery and access.
• Do you have established workflows for processing email?
• If yes, how did you created these workflows? What resources did you consult?
• If no, how are you handling email collections at the moment?
• Could you please walk me through your workflow for processing email collections?
• What are the steps for accessioning email?
• After, you’ve accessioned the email, what comes next? Does the email go into some type of processing queue?
• What preservation activities are involved in processing the email?
• Do you normalize files?
48
• contents of an email corpus?
• How do you handle reviewing email for sensitive information? o How much human review/intervention is needed during
sensitivity review?
o What challenges do you face with sensitivity review?
o What are the strengths and weaknesses of the tools you use to review email? In other words, what is working well and what can be improved.
• What are your approaches or methodologies to appraising email (e.g. macro, functional, micro, technical, bottom-up, etc.)? Does it differ depending on whether its university archives or manuscript collections?
o How do these appraisal approaches differ from appraising other archival materials?
o Who is involved in appraisal activities?
o How are decisions made regarding disposition and restriction of messages?
o How much time is spent on appraisal? o Do you document appraisal decisions?
• How is the email ultimately arranged and described?
• How is the email stored for long-term preservation?
• How is the email made discoverable and accessible to the public?
• What challenges do you face when making email accessible?
• Have you had requests to use email collections?
• What do you find most frustrating about email archiving?
• For institutions that are not processing email but want to, what advice would you give?