Museums and the Web 2014 Deep Dive Workshop: Email Preservation. Lightning talk examining issues that the cultural heritage sector faces in preserving and providing access to history via email correspondence. #MW2014 #deepdive
1. Email Archiving:
Issues and Concerns
Deep Dive: Assessing Tools and Best Practices for
Email Preservation and Access in Art Museums
2. A few things about
official email correspondence
that keep me up at night …
3. Correspondence as primary source material
• Organizational history
• Object acquisition
• Artworks … what is today’s equivalent to Van Gogh’s
letters?
• Incomplete threads
• Inconsistent (or non-existent) archiving practices
- Multiple formats
- Print & paper file: inconsistent practice, no guidelines, can’t monitor
- Idiosyncratic approaches
4. Questions of intellectual property
• Who owns the content?
• Reliance on cloud-based systems
- Terms of service vary widely
5. Scary Technology Stuff
• Years of inbox size limits
- IT had real resource limits – treated as a cost center
- IT ordered deletion, offered no alternative
• Migration from system-to-system
- Migration can be “lossy”
6. Archiving versus Backup
• Um … they aren’t the same thing …
• Confuses senior decision-makers
• Even if archiving is taking place:
- Lack of policies
- Unfiltered content (loads of garbage)
- Versioning issues
- Failures & inadvertent deletes
7. Inbox used as de facto DAM system
• File attachments galore
• Storage, search, retrieval challenges
• Content disappears when staff depart
8. Legal Stuff
• Provenance
• Subpoena/Discovery
• Other (mainly HR) issues: bias, discrimination,
harassment, etc.