Phase III (January-May 2004)

• Began development of best practices guidelines

• Reviewed state of NC guidelines/policies and those of more than 2 dozen other states, universities, and government entities

• Decision to change format from manual to web-based FAQs

Phase III saw our focus shift from gathering and coding data to thinking about how the Archivists and Records Managers on the project team could take that data and apply it in the workplace. How could we inform, improve, and encourage better email and file management practices? We had some pretty good ideas about the areas where university employees needed help: they needed to know what to save (or how to identify a university record) and how to save it, they needed to know what it was safe to delete (and when they should delete it), and they needed to know some basics about authenticity (how to handle attachments and the importance of header information).

Then we did some research on the guidelines and policies that were already out there, including North Carolina's guidelines for managing email, and those of more than 2 dozen other states, universities, and government entities. We talked about what we liked and disliked about some of these other guidelines and policies – a lot of them were very boring and difficult to read – and we wondered how we would ever be able to devise guidelines that would be brief, informative, and something that university employees would actually be inclined to read and find useful. We decided that the original project goal of creating a "best practices manual" would have to morph into something web-based and much more fluid – so we decided on a Q & A format that would be brief, easy to add on or link to, and not software specific.