Email Archiving in a Curation Lifecycle Context

TL;DR

The Harvard Library has developed a custom email archiving system, called EAS, which integrates with their Digital Repository Service (DRS) to handle email and message attachments for long-term preservation. They have also built a controlled vocabulary maintenance system, called WordShack, to handle entity resolution.

Transcript

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Key Insights

• 💌 The Harvard Library has developed a custom email archiving system, EAS, to handle email and message attachments for long-term preservation.
• 🎚️ EAS supports accessioning, processing, and preservation activities, including normalization, metadata editing, and item-level processing.
• 👨‍🔬 EAS integrates with the DRS for long-term preservation and provides tools for searching, filtering, and editing metadata.
• 💌 EAS has built-in functionality for handling sensitive data and attachments in email collections.

Questions & Answers

Q: How does EAS handle sensitive data in email collections?

EAS has built-in functionality to flag potential sensitive data, such as Social Security numbers and credit card numbers, and allows archivists to take manual action to handle these items accordingly.

Q: Can EAS handle attachments in email collections?

Yes, EAS can handle attachments by decoding them, extracting embedded attachments, and reattaching external attachments. Archivists can download, delete, or push attachments to the DRS for long-term preservation.

Q: Can EAS integrate with other repository systems?

While EAS was custom-built to integrate specifically with the Harvard DRS, there are plans to develop interoperability with other repository systems in the future.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The Harvard Library has developed an email archiving system called EAS, which integrates with their Digital Repository Service (DRS), to handle email and message attachments for long-term preservation.

• EAS supports accessioning, processing, and preservation activities for email collections, including normalization, metadata editing, and item-level processing.

• EAS also supports integration with the DRS, allowing the push of email collections for long-term preservation, and provides tools for searching, filtering, and editing metadata.