Electronic Records Management Guidelines
E-mail Management
Annotated List of Resources
Primary Resources:
Ginn, M.L. Guideline for Managing E-mail. Prairie Village, KS: ARMA International, 2000.
Topics covered in this overview of e-mail management include organizational issues (e.g., legal, operational, governmental), creation and use of e-mail, and management of e-mail as a record (including filing, classification, backup, and disaster recovery).
Minnesota Historical Society, State Archives Department. Trustworthy Information Systems Handbook. Version 4, July 2002.
http://www.mnhs.org/preserve/records/tis/tis.html
This handbook provides an overview for all stakeholders involved in government electronic records management. Topics center around ensuring accountability to elected officials and citizens by developing systems that create reliable and authentic information and records. The handbook outlines the characteristics that define trustworthy information, offers a methodology for ensuring trustworthiness, and provides a series of worksheets and tools for evaluating and refining system design and documentation.
National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Committee. Managing E-Mail. December 2002.
http://www.ec3.org/Downloads/2002/managing_email.pdf
This guide tackles the perennial problem of e-mail management in a practical manner, offering model policies for use and retention, as well as a model user manual. While the policies acknowledge that e-mail is a record that should be managed on the basis of its content, the underlying assumption is that most e-mail has only transient value, and three retention periods (immediate destruction, limited retention, and archival retention) are proposed. A guide to implementing the models is also included.
Additional Resources:
Utah State Archives and Records Services: Electronic Records.
http://www.archives.utah.gov/main/index.php?module=Pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=1&pid=201
Visit this web site for links to the e-mail policies of a number of states in the United States, as well as links to additional web resources for records management.
Electronic Records Management Guidelines, March 2004, Version 4.
