Curating E-Mails; A life-cycle approach to the management and preservation of e-mail messages

E-mail forms the backbone of communications in many modern institutions and organisations and is a valuable type of organisational, cultural, and historical record. Successful management and preservation of valuable e-mail messages and collections is therefore vital if organisational accountability is to be achieved and historical or cultural memory retained for the future. This requires attention by all stakeholders across the entire life-cycle of the e-mail records. This instalment of the Digital Curation Manual reports on the several issues involved in managing and curating e-mail messages for both current and future use. Although there is no 'one-size-fits-all' solution, this instalment outlines a generic framework for e-mail curation and preservation, provides a summary of current approaches, and addresses the technical, organisational and cultural challenges to successful e-mail management and longer-term curation.

JISC Programme Synthesis Study: Supporting Digital Preservation & Asset Management in Institutions

In mid-2006, JISC requested that the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), in its capacity as a centre of excellence on digital preservation and digital curation, undertake a small-scale study to synthesise and help disseminate the results of projects funded under the Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions (DPAM) programme. This report is the final outcome of that exercise.

Archiving Web Site Resources: A Records Management View

In this paper, we propose the use of records management principles to identify and manage Web site resources with enduring value as records. Current Web archiving activities, collaborative or organisational, whilst extremely valuable in their own right, often do not and cannot incorporate requirements for proper records management. Material collected under such initiatives therefore may not be reliable or authentic from a legal or archival perspective, with insufficient metadata collected about the object during its active life, and valuable materials destroyed whilst ephemeral items are maintained. Education, training, and collaboration between stakeholders are integral to avoiding these risks and successfully preserving valuable Web-based materials.