Peter and Listmembers,
Thanks for the tip about "Managing Electronic Messages as Records," Peter. I didn't know about that publication. I'll check with my records management colleagues to see if any of them already have it. If not, I may order it for myself from the ARMA bookstore. I'm not an ARMA member but I'm trying to educate myself about some RM issues.
I really appreciate your RAIN postings, BTW. One of them from 2003 had a fascinating story which illustrated what can happen when people don't realize that the e-mails they send may be records. Remember when you posted a link to "Workers Hit By Email Bullies" at
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0600uk/page.cfm?objectid=12792312&method=full&siteid=50082 ? The article discussed how e-mail bullying creates unhappiness, leads people to leave jobs, etc.
I recently re-read that article in the Recmgmt-L archives and was struck by the line, ""One of the things that frequently amazes us - even now - is how naive people are about e-mail. They think once they hit send, it's gone. But many copies exist - on your computer's hard drive, on your server, on the back-up tapes, on the recipient's computer, on their server and so on."
I would bet there still are employees in many organizations who fail to recognize they may be creating records when they write email -- even now, after a number of news stories over the years in which email messages figured prominently (the Microsoft litigation, etc)? Maybe they don't follow news stories closely or connect all the dots.
At any rate, it's our job - well, most of your jobs - to figure out how to segregate the record material from the nonrecord material in email. Fascinating challenge, and I'm glad the topic came up again this week on the List. It's one of the subjects I'm trying to learn about. I've read some interesting postings here and also got some good responss off list to my inquiry yesterday.
Thanks,
Maarja
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