Larry hit the nail on the head - using the right tool for the job too. Always be aware of the possibility of 'bias' from the author in any bit of information you receive. And we all should know that email archiving solutions are not recordkeeping solutions. Feel free to use information in the National Archives of Australia's Archives Advice number 69 "Email archiving solutions are not recordkeeping solutions" at http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/rkpubs/advices/advice69.html. Of course, this is shameless self promotion, but no more so than a vendor giving advice which may sell him more 'units'. On the other hand, I have always wondered if any sane person would go to the trouble of storing millions of spam messages received by most (if not all) businesses. John Lovejoy [log in to unmask] National Archives of Australia Some of these views are my own, some accurately reflect the published views of my employer -----Original Message----- Subject: Re: RAIN 0926 Compliance Mistakes, Ghost town photos, Museum mystery On 9/27/05, Peterson, Elvin Jr. wrote: > > I was a little surprised. Using the rationale that storage costs are so > low you can afford to keep everything forever doesn't take into account t= he > management required for that ever growing amount of storage. Acquisition > cost is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to storage management. On 9/27/05, Broady-Rudd, Sandra wrote: Did y'all read the compliance mistakes article? Did you not think they were > completely off-base? In one paragraph they are saying save all e-mail > forever (see below) and then treat e-mail like hard copy documents (see > below). Would we ever consider keeping all of our hard copy documents > forever, whether they are records or not? By treating ALL e-mail as busin= ess > records, isn't this just as bad as treating ALL e-mail as non-records? I = was > surprised this was also the philosophy of one of the vendors we met with > when choosing our content management system. Okay... critical piece of this article to take into account is the writer's bio.... "Anthony Sanchez is a technology, Internet and email veteran, having nearl= y two decades of experience as a technology marketer. He is currently VP of Marketing for Waterford Technologies, Inc., an Email Management, Archiving and Compliance software developer." Now, given what he does and what he sells, it's apparent that he has no concept of RIM policies and practices, but rather the perspective he approaches the issue from is "save everything, it's easier" which is the position many tool vendors generally take. If all of your problems look like nails, then the best solution is a hammer, right? =3D) This is exactly what I was getting at in the message I sent last week on the subject "Proceedings", that it's up to us as RIM Professionals to seek out these misstated "facts" and provide the RIM perspective that explains that this isn't a SOLUTION, but rather, it results in an even greater PROBLEM. Larry List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance