At the French National Library, we have been setting up for three years a records management system. It takes into account the issue of the email.
We consider that one of the most important benefits of archiving email is that we are able to put them in relation with others documents. It helps our staff to work in a more efficient manner .
We don't have statistics yet but at the beginning of the next year, we will be able to know how many emails received were catched in the records management system, classified and so on.
At the FNL, email boxes are considered as private, so the records manager is not allowed to see the email and to catch them if the staff should ask it or leave the library for example. Moreover, the boxes have a limited number of Mo. It is a very good point for the records management. Nobody can stock his email in the box during a long time and none email box is archived. So everybody knows that it is necessary to record the mail when it could be required to follow an action. The staff is also systematically trained about these points.
How we do ? A part only of the email is useful to manage the organization. A part of it can be immediately destroyed. So each member of the staff has in his email box a radio button and could decide to record the mail in a knowledge data base. It is optional. All the original metadata of the mail are thus preserved with the content and the files attached but these metadata are automatically completed with other metadata as the type of document (email), the dates of the recording,the name of the people who records... The staff can also change the metadata "title" automatically filled with the object of the email to get it more comprehensive. Of course in all cases, the original object is preserved too. In the next version (in a week or a fortnight), an email couldn't be recorded twice as it is still the case today when it is received by more than one people in the library.
After recorded, the email could be linked to other documents in one or several virtual files. For example, it could be linked in the file of a project or of a meeting, with other documents such as reports, notes, letters...
So in my point of view, one of the main advantages of email archiving is to link the email with other objects of information, of course when the records management system takes into account all the documents useful to the organization and allows to create files about subjects treated by the organization. The other documents add meaning to the email.
So it is easy and quick when you have to work about a subject to find all documents related to this subject.
I add that email has not generally a long life in the records management system. At the Library, an email is recorded and preserved during 10 years by default. But if the staff wants to preserve it longer, he can lenghten this life cycle. He couldn't shorten it.
The last point : to do all that, we use at the FNL, Lotus Notes for our email as well for our knowledge databases, one of the cornerstone of our records management system.
Catherine Dhérent
chef de la mission pour la Gestion de la production documentaire et des archives
records and archives manager
Bibliothèque nationale de France
French National Library
Quai François-Mauriac
75706 Paris Cedex 13
France
mél : catherine.dherent@bnf.fr
web :
http://www.bnf.fr/pages/collections/coll_archives.htmjhagmann - 26. Okt, 21:55
