Interview Findings – Arrangement (cont.)

How do you determine when to make a new folder?

• New responsibilities - 32

• Quantity - 30

gComputer guys make fun of me with all my folders.h

Most people make new folders when they become involved in a new project or have new job responsibilities, and the quantity of emails about a particular topic or event is generally the determining factor in whether or not they make a new folder.

[click] This is one of my favorite comments from this section of the interviews, and I think it's significant because the prevailing attitude in the IT department seems to be one of "Why bother with all this organizing of emails and files into elaborate folder structures? Just delete what you don't need, and keep everything else in the inbox – you can use your search feature to find anything you need." This is an IT point of view, certainly not an archives point of view. How would we make sense of this huge jumble of emails in no discernible order? What is their context (how do they relate to other files created by the same person)? So in some ways I'm very heartened by the fact that this group, at least, uses folders to organize and retrieve their emails. The problem is, this is the group that seems least aware of the possible historical value of their email and other electronic records. There's another problem here, too, and I'll come back to it at the end of my presentation – and that is whether or not this IT point of view has become more prevalent in the university community over the past 2 years and if so, how it might have changed the way that people organize their email – or not – at the present time.