Archiving & Preserving Emails
It may seem unlikely that your institution will ever want to permanently preserve an email - after all they are hardly the same as the ancient charters written on parchment, or the vast ledgers and accounting books which may feature in your historical archive. But it is important to remember that years ago those ledgers and accounting books were also seen as bland functional, administrative records of operational rather than historical value. The emails informing staff that the institution has been awarded university status or is to merge with another college are obvious examples of messages which need preserving as part of the historical record. Other examples might be less obvious but are likely to be characterised as emails which answer the what, when, why, who and how questions associated with major developments within the institution. As ever, the secret is not to manage emails based on the fact that they are emails, but according to their content. As such emails of potential historical value should be identified and captured according to whatever policies your institution has in place for identifying its archival records. The guidance on Archival Appraisal which accompanies the JISC infoNet Records Retention Schedule provides advice in this regard.
Alongside the few 'historic' messages which may require permanent preservation there is also likely to exist another category to be considered: those emails which for operational reasons need to be retained and accessible for a long period of time. It is hard to put a precise number of years against what constitutes a 'long period of time', but when talking about information held in electronic format this could be as little as anything older than five to ten years. Without taking special measures to ensure their continued longevity it is likely that emails older than this will lose some or all of the characteristics required to retain their evidential status as records (see the records management strand of this resource for further details of these characteristics). Emails relating to building projects, long term contracts, research trials and employment matters amongst others could all fall into this category.
The measures required to preserve such emails and to provide continued access to their content can be complex and will require a mixture of policy, technology and user participation - starting with the need to identify potential candidates for preservation at the earliest possible stage. This will inevitably require the participation of users so training and awareness of such issues as part of general email training is likely to feature as an important first step.
The JISC Digital Curation Centre has produced an excellent, detailed, set of guidelines on the curation of email. It is a comprehensive, yet readable, guide to the subject and is recommended as the source of detailed guidance in this area.
