• E-mail as a Public Record in North Carolina http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/records/e_records/Email_8_02.pdf

So now here we are practically at the end of this project, and [click] researchers and software developers are coming up with ways to help people manage their personal information without folders, without filing, indeed, they're touting the "seamless" approach to PIM (personal information management). [click] Things have changed since we conducted our interviews, we know that – we believe that people probably have a lot more email to manage than they had 2 years ago, and that they're probably spending a lot more of their workday utilizing email for various functions. Some of the 88% of the people who said they used folders to organize their email may not be using folders as much any more – maybe they're keeping more emails in their inboxes and using their email application's search function to find what they need. We think it would be interesting to do some follow-up interviews with a small group of people to see if our suppositions are borne out.

[click] But the challenge for archivists and records managers remains one of educating the end-user and also working with IT staff to make them more aware of the archival perspective in managing the university's digital assets. The guidelines issued by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources for managing email [click] http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/records/e_records/Email_8_02.pdf state that "a large number of email messages in an undifferentiated mailbox or folder and lacking organization and identifying characteristics will not be accepted." The guidelines also recommend a recordkeeping system that "allows e-mail to be categorized to facilitate preservation, retrieval, use, or disposal." So that's our story, and we're sticking to it!