1 Understanding and Empowering the Individual… Preserving the Public Record and Institutional...

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Understanding and Empowering the Individual…Preserving the Public Record and Institutional History

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Email Management, Electronic Records, and Beyond

Dr. Helen R. TibboSchool of Information and Library Science

UNC-Chapel HillTimothy Pyatt

Duke Unversity http://www.ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop

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Thought for the day….

“The end-user manages e-mail.”

-ARMA Guideline for Managing E-mail

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Thank You to

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission

for funding this project

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Goals for Today

Project background, goals, and objectives.

Discussion of the methodologies used for data collection and analysis in this project.

Overview of findings. Presentation of FAQs. Training tools – slides and tutorial.

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Digital Desktop Project Team

Dr. Helen Tibbo, Co-PI, Professor, UNC-SILS Dr. Paul Conway, Director, Digital Asset Initiatives, Duke

Libraries, Duke Kim Chang, Co-Project Manager Megan Winget, Co-Project Manager, SILS Ph.D. student Timothy Pyatt, University Archivist, Duke Janis Holder, University Archivist, UNC David Mitchell, Records Manager, Duke Frank Holt, Records Manager, UNC Ruth Monnig, SILS Ph.D. Student, 1st PM Russell Koonts, Archivist, DUMC

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Advisory Board

Deborah Barreau, Asst. Professor, SILS Michel Bezy, Program Director, Strategy Autonomic Computing,

IBM Elizabeth Bunting, Assoc. VP for Legal Affairs, UNC System Mark Crowell, Asst. V-C for Economic Development, UNC

Charles Dollar, Archival Consultant Eric Mlyn, Director of Robinson Scholars Program

Joel Dunn, Director, Networking Collaboration, UNC Kelly Eubank, Electronic Records Archivist, NC Dept. Cultural

Resources Roslyn Holdzkom, Asst. Curator of Manuscripts, UNC Madeleine Perez, University Archivist, UNC-Charlotte Joanna Carey Smith, Associate University Counsel, UNC Jeanne Smythe, Director, Computing Policy, UNC

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Project Goals - 1

Document how faculty, administrators, and staff use and manage files and records from electronic mail and other desktop applications at UNC-CH, Duke University, and by extension, throughout the 16-campus UNC system and across academia…

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Project Goals - 2

Based on the analysis of user needs and practices, as well as the North Carolina Public Records Act, develop optimized e-mail and desktop management "best practice" guidelines to serve both public and private higher education in North Carolina and provide an adaptable model of practice for other states.

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Project Goals - 3

Develop educational opportunities (workshops, FAQs, exercises, web-based courses, etc.) to optimize faculty, administrator, and staff use and management of desktop electronic documents.

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Project Goals - 4

Develop user profiles necessary for a strategic consideration of electronic records management systems and use these to evaluate the potential appropriateness of ERMSs for the UNC-CH and Duke campuses.

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And…Dissemination

Disseminate information about the best practices guidelines and instructional units at UNC, Duke, and across the 16-campus UNC system via a statewide conference and to other universities via the records management/ archival literatures and conferences and the project website.

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Methodology

In order to learn how faculty, staff, and administrators manage their electronic materials we Conducted campus-wide surveys at UNC-

Chapel Hill and Duke University. Interviewed 100 individuals. Interviewed approximately 15 IT staff.

We coded and analyzed the data from the interviews using NVIVO software.

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Best Answer?

Helping people become information management literate.

Moving people toward better practice. Realizing that telling people to manage

electronic files as “paper” has not been effective.

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Who We Surveyed

8,334 addresses at UNC. 17,327 addresses at Duke.About 212 emails bounced at UNC.About 1,115 bounced at Duke.

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1899 Valid Duke Survey RespondentsDuke Respondents

Staff/Employee73%

Faculty27%

507

1392

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1076 Valid UNC Responses

UNC Respondents

Staff/Employee

60%

Faculty

40%

644432

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Survey Questions

Email application most often used Volume/time spent on email Attachments Storage practices Importance to job Specific Concerns Willingness to do further interview

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Interview Protocol Development

Went back to our original goals. To understand how individuals manage

their digital desktops, both email messages and digital files.

To devise guidelines, aids, and learning models to support improved user behavior.

What are people doing? How can we improve what they are

doing both for their own work and for the university?

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Designing the Interviews

Started with the concerns that surfaced in the survey returns.

Generated every possible question we could devise, in probably as inappropriate forms as we could. Pooled our questions. Used words like, “appraisal,” and

“authenticity.”

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Developing the Conceptual Framework

Categorized our questions. Because we are exploring how

individuals are functioning as their own records managers and archivists, we linked our questions to basic archival functions.

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Framework for Questions

Electronic files must undergo appraisal in order to assess their importance, potential for long-term preservation, and their “recordness.”

In order to ensure authenticity, particular actions must happen and particular information must be created and preserved.

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Interview Framework

In order to preserve electronic records, the digits and their context must be physically secured and preserved.

Arrangement in a logical file structure can be useful in making electronic records accessible.

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Framework for Study

In order for electronic records to be accessible they must be described clearly and adequately. Description can involve indexing, abstracting, and other additional subject analysis or simply file naming and titling.

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Framework

How individuals view ownership of electronic materials and issues of privacy and security will influence how they handle the items. Thus, we need to ask individuals to whom they believe the messages belong, what rights they have to privacy of the message content, and how secure the messages/email system is.

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Appraisal questions

What criteria do you use to decide to keep an email message? To delete one?

What criteria do you use to decide to keep an electronic document? To delete one?

Do you think any of the email messages or documents that you receive or produce in the course of your daily work should be preserved for years to come by the university? Why?/Why not?

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Authenticity Questions

How do you save attachments? When you save an attachment, do you

save the email message along with it? If you store important messages

electronically outside of your email application, does the header information stay with the messages?

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Arrangement

Tell me about your email/file folder structure that we see here.

Get print-out of folder structure. Would you say that you use a similar

structure in email and file directories? Paper file structure? Tell us about the file structure on your

hard drive. How have you organized materials?

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Description

How do you determine subject lines you attach to work-related email messages you send?

How do you retrieve stored messages if you need them at a later time?

How do you name electronic files? How do you retrieve your electronic

files?

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Physical Preservation

Are your email messages being backed up automatically?

Do you explicitly back up your email messages?

Are your electronic files (documents, images, etc.) automatically backed up?

Do you keep copies of all the messages you send? If so, where/how do you keep these?

How do you store important messages?

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Privacy & Security

Is your email yours or the university’s? Other files on your UNC computer?

Who owns your email? (Ownership vs. intellectual property issues with this question)

Who can [has the ability] to read your email without your permission? Your electronic files?

Do you distinguish between "official" and personal email? Do you manage and store them differently?

UNC ONLY: Have you heard of the Public Records law in North Carolina?

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Interview Participants

Goal was to interview a wide cross-section of faculty, staff, and administrators at both campuses.

Only selected people who indicated they wished further involvement after the survey.

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Selection Framework

Tried to apply Samuels’ Varsity Letters model: Confer credentials Convey knowledge Foster socialization Conduct research Sustain the institution Provide public service Promote culture

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Samuels’ Model Did Not Work

We could not break all the individuals we had from the survey into Samuels’ 7 categories.

Job titles did not reflect job functions. We decided we didn’t know enough

about our population to apply a model blindly.

We would select from faculty and staff from various departments and administrative units.

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Interviews

We conducted 100 interview during spring and summer of 2003.

Most averaged 45 minutes in length with some over an hour, some briefer.

One person interviewed; another took notes in a spreadsheet.

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Coding

Took each interview note session and coded using NVIVO software.

Developed codes for each question and reconciled over entire set of questions.

Two people coded all the questions. Reconciled disparate codes and coding.

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Life After Coding

Next step was to make charts and tables for as many quantifiable questions as possible.

Highlight useful and telling quotations within notes.

Explore data topically.

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Building the FAQs

Looked at Email handling guidelines. Looked at FAQs. Looked at our data. Studied NC Public Records Law. Designed preliminary FAQs. Held focus group of UNC & Duke

interview participants. Revised and fleshed out FAQs and site

design.

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History of FAQs

Originally we thought the right manual had not been created but that we would write it!

Many manuals appeared but life was not better.

Reluctantly we concluded people don’t read manuals.

We hope people will consult the FAQs.

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Findings – Lots of Behaviors

Pilers and filers. Obsessive-compulsive organizers. The mess-tolerant.

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Lots of Different Practices

Different email applications. Different capabilities of each system. Different understanding of security,

backup, and privacy.

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The Times They Are A-Changin’

How do people manage email after GMail? No file No weed

How does this influence management of other materials?

Records management in the day of extreme personalization????

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Implications for Archivists & Records Managers

Powerful search engines. Successful searching/sorting in email

and our other large files depends on personal knowledge as well as search engine.

Archival community, partnered with the IT community must come up with new retrieval paradigms.

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Next Steps

Make useful changes to the tools you will see today based on your input.

Write articles for American Archivist and other journals.

Input what we learned into the design of electronic records management at UNC and Duke.

Final report to NHPRC.

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Regrets & Future Studies

Regret we couldn’t interview enough people to say definitively Faculty to this; staff to that Dukies do this; Tar Heels do that

Need to study behavior now and see influence of new software.

Data mining techniques need to be developed.