Please pardon the cross postings.

Anybody out there come up with a retention period for
listservs?  Not the individual messages that a person
subscribed to a listserv might get, but an agency that
administers a listserv.  I'm thinking about the
listserv archives here.  

Our state's IT dept sent out a message to all listserv
administrators/moderators that the state wanted to
come up with a retention period for archived listserv
messages.  Don't know yet if he was just talking about
online versus some type near/offline retention or a
total retention.  This agency administrates the
network infrastructure and handles all
incoming/outgoing email (KY has a centralized email
system for all state agencies) and they are getting
concerned about the volume of email they're having to
deal with.  Our state records branch manager
administrates a listserv (hosted on the state system)
for the KY Council on Archives (our state's
professional archival organization) so he got the
message and he informed this IT person that they have
to work through our dept. and the state's Archives and
Records Commission to actually develop a formal
retention period.

Our thought is to:
1.  Give a somewhat vague and transitory retention (in
our state general schedule for electronic and related
records -
http://www.kdla.ky.gov/recmanagement/schedules/erecordsgeneral.pdf
) and encourage the state IT folks to work with the
individual agencies that have listservs about those
that feel a need to keep long-term versus those that
don't.  We would then work with agencies individually
to schedule the listserv on the agency's specific
schedule.

Or 

2.  Come up with a generic retention (2 years for
example) for all listservs - and then schedule those
that need to be scheduled longer separately.

This discussion also raised the issue about blogs as
well.  (I thoroughly chastised and beat the person who
asked the question - kidding)  To the best of my
knowledge there current aren't any OFFICIALLY
sanctioned blogs recognized as a government record. 
This doesn't mean individual employees or officials
aren't doing them on their own - which raises the
whole issue of public versus private ownership and all
of that.  But that's for a different post.

Any ideas or comments from both the public and private
sector would be appreciated.  My contact info is in
the signature line below if you want to contact me off
list.  We are also addressing this issue on the
university side not only with listservs but blogs as
well.  We're not tackling the actual retention and
preservation of listserv archives yet, just
establishing a retention period.

Thanks and have an enjoyable weekend.

Mark J. Myers
Electronic Records Specialist
Public Records Division 
Kentucky Dept. for Libraries & Archives
300 Coffee Tree Road, P.O. Box 537
Frankfort KY 40602-0537
Phone:  502.564.8300 ext. 244
Email:  [log in to unmask]

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance