Email as cultural heritage resource: appraisal solutions from an art museum context
| Published date | 21 March 2016 |
| Date | 21 March 2016 |
| Pages | 68-82 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-04-2015-0014 |
| Author | Anthony Cocciolo |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance |
Email as cultural heritage
resource: appraisal solutions
from an art museum context
Anthony Cocciolo
Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science, New York,
New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to evaluate strategies to appraise email correspondence to
select signicant email for permanent preservation without capturing trivial or personal emails. The
strategies were tested on the actual email accounts of selected individuals occupying important roles
within an important cultural institution in the Northeastern USA.
Design/methodology/approach – Treating this art museum as a case study site, email messages
are manually appraised for retention using a rubric. Following the appraisal, strategies for expediting
this appraisal process, using what is learned from the manual appraisal process, are explored.
Findings – A major nding of this study is that sent mail is almost always signicant, although
preserving only sent mail, or preserving sent mail in combination with inbox items that have been acted
upon (replied to or forwarded), are not sufcient to capture signicant correspondence. Rather, a social
network approach holds the most promise to accelerate the process of email appraisal.
Originality/value – This study provides empirically grounded strategies for appraising email for
permanent retention.
Keywords Electronic records management, Born-digital archives, Museum archives,
Email collections
Paper type Case study
Introduction
In late 2014, the hacking of emails and other digital les from Sony Pictures, Inc. made
front-page news across the globe, eventually involving heads of state and resulting in a
national security response (Sanger et al., 2014). The incident prompted commentary
from a variety of angles, including the notable perspective that individuals should delete
all their electronic correspondence when they are complete and suggestions to never say
anything via electronic communication that you would mind being repeated in the
public (Clark et al., 2014;Okyle, 2014). Responding to this kind of advice in the editorial
page of the New York Times,Bruni (2014) noted that “delete, delete, delete. That’s a bit
of your humanity being snuffed out”, further arguing that:
It’s not just creativity that’s in jeopardy. It’s not just candor. It’s secure islands of unformed
thought and sloppy talk, places where people take necessary vacations from judgment,
allowances for impropriety that make propriety possible. And these aren’t or shouldn’t be,
luxuries.
As the case of Sony illustrated, email has proven to be a mechanism for communicating
“unformed thought” and “sloppy talk”, as well as a suitable medium for the well
articulated and coherent. Because email is used by individuals most frequently as
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
RMJ
26,1
68
Received 8 April 2015
Revised 8 April 2015
Accepted 1 June 2015
RecordsManagement Journal
Vol.26 No. 1, 2016
pp.68-82
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/RMJ-04-2015-0014
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