Am I the only person who sees a parallel to the issue that Lynn Frank
has raised pertaining to the ability to read old microfilm "during my
search I noticed documents of varying retention periods ( from 60 years
ago to permanent)" and the related issues of dealing with disposition,
retrieval, etc. and the issue of E-mail archiving which Tim Barnard has
raised?

 

To me the issues reflect the same ignorance of the value of categorizing
information according to its function and value while it is active so
that at a later point, the pile can be properly sorted into retention
categories and retained (or disposed of) appropriately.  

 

If you don't use some strategy for doing this with the email now, then
later, despite the much vaunted ability of searching tools, the same
issues Lynn has raised will be intensely magnified "they believe that we
must save every e-mail forever" and those who are in that same position
in the years 2010 and beyond will find their inability to separate the
wheat from the chaff cripples their ability to find the relevant
information.

 

This doesn't even begin to address the other ancillary issues of varying
needs for security (see the thread on the Texas County Clerks issue)
and, although my buddies in IT remind me how cheap is storage.....yeah
eventually, it won't be....OR something very valuable will be deleted
and its absence will be a huge liability.

 

If I am on track, I have probably only begun to scratch the surface, but
I truly believe our actions today will be of great importance to those
who follow us in the decades to come.

 

Mary Hilliard, CRM


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