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Fwd: archiving e-mail



To the list:

I got this from a friend, and wanted to
share this info with all of you.  Perhaps
I should also forward this to the good
people at NARA??

Margaret Monroe

(writing from home)

Office Technician (Typing)
and UNofficial archivist for the all
state-owned toll bridge records
held in Caltrans District 4

Division of Structure Maintenance &
Investigations - Toll Bridges
Room 10-400
P. O. Box 23660
Oakland, CA  94623-0660

Message:

--- Anne Ogborn <anniepoo@netmagic.net> wrote:
> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 23:24:55 -0800
> From: Anne Ogborn <anniepoo@netmagic.net>
> To: Margaret Monroe <mhmcat@yahoo.com>
> Subject: email archives
>
> I know you're on the archive list. If it'd be
> of interest to them would you
> forward?
>
>    I'm Anne Ogborn. I'm a software engineer. I
> was listening to NPR today
> and some archivist was talking about creating a
> collection of letters &
> how we're going to lose that source of history
> because of email.
>    I've heard this notion a half dozen times,
> and it's always struck me
> as odd, because it would be so easy to ensure
> that email was preserved.
> But apparently it's "common knowledge" amongst
> archivists that email
> is ephemeral.
>   It's not. Most email is delivered by a
process
> called POP3. (Post Office Protocol,
> revision 3). I'm sending this mail to Margaret.
> Actually, I'm sending this email to
> the outgoing mail server at www.idiom.com,
> which will, within a few seconds, route it
> on to someplace else, which will route it to
> someplace else, until it arrives at the
> yahoo email server, where it will stay until
> she reads it.
>   I'm writing this at 11pm local time. So
> Margaret probably won't read this until
> tomorrow. When she does download it, it will be
> removed from the yahoo server.
> Presumably this is why it 'wont be preserved'.
>   But it WILL be preserved!  Sometime between
> now and tomorrow morning an automated
> process at yahoo, as at every well run server,
> will copy all the information off the
> server that has changed since this was last
> done (which includes all the email). Virtually
> every server on the Internet maintains these
> 'backups'.
> Usually the backup is done onto some sort of
> tape system. There's often some sort of
> rotation
> scheme. Here's a typical rotation scheme:
>  keep every tape back to 1 week ago, then keep
> the f\Friday tapes back to the last full
> backup. Every 30 to 90 days make a full backup
> - a copy of everything on the system no matter
> when it was last changed. Often these are kept
> for several years.
> This is done because the possibility exists
> that the disks in the server will crash & lose
> the information stored on them. More than one
> exists because it's possible for things to
> subtly go wrong slowly, like termites invading
> a house. You want to have a version of the
> house in the 'no termites' condition.
> The only reason not to keep these tapes is the
> cost of the tapes. What struck me today was
> this professor urging her college students to
> save their e-mails - wouldn't it make more
> sense for her to simply talk to the
> university's IS department?
> So if you folks are interested in preserving
> personal communications, the people to talk to
> are ISP owners & other operators of POP
> servers.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Anne Ogborn


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