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[AV Media Matters] Passive Management - Obsolescence as a selection strategy
The following post was from the Archives Listserve and I thought that it
raised some interesting points, so I am posting it here with permission
because the author is not a member.
jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU] On
Behalf Of Robert Spindler
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 11:44 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Slate Article
Hi there - for a rather different perspective on this, I think we should
also remember how difficult it is to reliably destroy email. One of the
wonderful things about email is that copies are plentiful and you just
never know where they'll end up once you send them! There are a couple
emails from me available through google that date back to 1994 and 1996
as I recall. Plus there are plenty of people out there who print email
(although my color ink jet reds and blues are already fading).
Does destruction of email equal the end of history? Of course not. These
days we have so much content we don't remember the days when our
expensive and cumbersome document production and duplication
technologies really limited the number of copies of things available.
We're going to lose alot of documentation we now have the ability to
create, but on balance I'm not sure we have less documentation than we
had in the analog document world.
I think the big question really is about appraisal and advocacy. We
can't retrospectively select and save e-things because it doesn't scale
and the technology is often already obsolete when the document becomes
non-current, and/or available to an archive. How can we make things last
long enough to get professional help and arrive at a trusted digital
repository? I think its important to understand and admit that
archivists aren't doing selection of electronic content, creators of
e-documents are doing the selection by their choice of technologies and
their willingness to "archive" in the non-professional sense of the
term, regardless of existing records retention schedules or public
records laws. Do busy people think about this stuff? Not unless
archivists are out there reminding them of the advantages and
consequences, and helping them with their desktop document management
practices!
Rob Spindler
University Archivist and Head
Archives and Manuscripts
Arizona State University Libraries
Box 871006, Tempe AZ 85287-1006
480.965.9277 FAX 480.965.9169
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James Lindner
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