This has been an issue that we have been looking at here in KY - the retention scheduling of listserv archives. Our state IT dept. has been pushing for state oriented/hosted listservs to do something with their archives because of various issues of size, space, Open Records, etc. These range from technical listservs completely internal to state government (both inter and intra agency) as well as public listservs hosted or administrated by state agencies. For example, the KY Council on Archives listserv is maintained and administrated by us. (This is a bad example, because in two years it's had about 10 postings.)
What brought this to our (the state archives) attention was in 2003 our brand new governor dissolved the state's Women's Commission (can't remember the actual name) which hosted a listserv that was open to the public and dealt with women's issues. This listserv received some notoriety do to some often contentious and political flame wars that periodically occurred on the listserv. When the commission was dissolved my branch was notified about the listserv. There was great debate in-house over the appraisal of the value of the archives because of the overall role and actions of the commission (it had been a political hot-potato for other reasons.) As Patrick Cunningham said in a previous post however, even with the "really good" postings the overwhelming amount of postings in the archives we completely transitory and not worth maintaining. Things like the ubiquitous "me too" postings, meeting announcements, and general chatter. In the end the commission was reconstituted (sanitized - did I say that out loud) and we ended up giving most of the records back to them. The issues that we were looking at from the appraisal side, in addition to historical value were also the practical matters of essentially a giant text file and how we would be able to provide adequate access to the records (the ability to sort and search the archives.) I think we still have copies of archives though.
I have trying to develop a generic retention recommendation for listserv archives to add to state's general electronic records schedule. The retention period that I have been playing with is designed to be fairly broad to allow agencies some room to maintain or discard the archives, potentially something like "retain until no longer useful" with some caveat about the state archivist assessing on a case-by-case basis for any possible historical value.
Has any body else dealt with this from a scheduling standpoint. I do want to make clear that I am talking about the archives of the listserv, not the individual postings that subscribers receive. The last time I posted about this issue, there was some confusion about that.
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]
----- Original Message ----
From: Peter Kurilecz <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 2:35:59 PM
Subject: Re: [RM] SAA removes listserv archives
On 3/14/07, Chris Flynn <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I haven't talked to anyone on that side of tha hall lately, but I would
> guess that it is the ownership and litigation issues that are driving this,
> not the cost so much. we had a similar issue with this list some years ago.
> If I remember correctly we lost a few years out of our archives as well.
the archives for recmgmt-l list were lost during migration not due to
threats of litigation. Everything prior to March 2000 vanished into
the ether. This list has undergone 2 migrations from syr.edu to mn.edu
to ufl.edu where we currently reside.
there is a question, in SAA's "mind" as to whether or not they own the
list archives prior to their taking ownership. A couple of folks have
threatened litigation if old postings aren't removed.
for those who would like to see what the discussion is about here is a
link to their archives. the arguments being put forth for
decommissioning the old archives are pretty lame in my estimation. SAA
leadership has been quiet about this except for the announcement.
http://forums.archivists.org/read/?forum=archives
needless to say but many of the archivist listserv subscribers are not
happy with the decision
--
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
Richmond, Va
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