Showcase 2007 Presentation

425 Steenbock Library
550 Babcock Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1201
Phone: (608) 262-5629
FAX: (608) 262-8899
Email: Records Management 

© 1996-2007 by the Regents of the University of Wisconsin.

Last updated:
May 2007

Originally published:
March 29, 2007

A Winning Strategy for Email Management

The following presentation materials that are available for downloading were used for the Archives and Records Management entry in UW-Madison's Showcase 2007. We created a poster and held three sessions focusing on managing email. The files here are presented in PDF file format. Please visit Adobe for a free copy of their PDF Reader software.

Poster | Presentation Materials | Questions & Answers | General Comments

POSTER

• A Winning Strategy for Email Management (36"x48") (PDF)
  Email is a problem. It needs to be continuously and effectively managed in order to deal with the deluge. This poster will help outline the major issues with laying out a strategy to manage email and what university departments can do together to help reduce the burden of email. (Note: This file is not currently set up to facilitate poster printing. Please contact our office for further information.)

PRESENTATION MATERIALS

• "Managing Your Email: Tips, Techniques, and the Law" (PDF | PPT )
  These presentation slides highlight the concerns of managing email at the university. Understanding how an email message may be a record and non-record affects how you treat the email message (retain or delete).

• Email as a Record and Non-Record (PDF)
  This handout describes how the State of Wisconsin defines a record and a non-record. It also provides some practical advice on how to assess your current use of email and a suggested best practice for classifying and naming your email folders.

• Email Decision Tree (PDF)
  This decision tree handout describes the steps you can take to help manage email.

• How to Handle University Email (PDF)
  This brochure discusses basic information about managing email as a university employee. It also outlines some basic UW-Madison email facts.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Q: I work for a project that has been in existence for 40 years. We rarely throw anything out. How can I help my co-workers decide what is really worth keeping? What kind of records are risky to hang onto forever (i.e., financial)?

A: Many different types of records can be 'risky' to retain long periods of time. On the other hand, some types of records are historically significant and should be transferred to the University Archives for preservation. I would recommend that you start by consulting the Campus General Records Retention Schedules on the ARMS website (http://archives.library.wisc.edu). These schedules should go a long way to paring down the accumulation of files that you reference. By being compliant with the general records schedules, your department has also met its legal retention requirements for common administrative and financial records. If you need assistance, please contact us.

Q: Have you ever presented at department chair meetings/retreats?

A: Yes, we do that quite frequently and are happy to do so!

Q: Things I like: handouts we can take back, copy and post/distribute may help, but ... are there other ways to get more staff trained in person?

A: How about a lunch-and-learn presentation focusing on one aspect of your department's or office's records? This is informal way to train/educate staff in a relaxed atmosphere. Nancy Kunde, the University Records Officer, is happy to facilitate such sessions.

Q: Are there web-based training tools (e.g., your handouts)?

A: This is something that we have talked about developing. Currently, we do not have the staff time or resources to do this. We are, however, investigating these possibilities.

Q: Do you look at yourselves as 'training the trainer' (dept. administrators go back to their departments/units and share information), which doesn't always work well?

A: Because we are such a small component on campus, we do have to do a fair amount of training the trainer presentations; however, we also do what we can in order to go one-on-one (time permitting). I realize that not all educational strategies work equally well in all situations. Please let us know what your specific records training needs are and we can try to develop something for you.

GENERAL COMMENTS

Comment: Keep putting the word out. I think many staff do not look at the 'official record' aspects of email. Unfortunately only a small number/percent attend functions like this or seminars you conduct.

Response: We keep trying. We appreciate hearing ways that we can reach out to campus folks. If you have an idea, please let us know!

Comment: We save email as a recruitment, hiring mechanism.

Response: This is fine, but remember that there are specific retention policies that apply to records created and received in the recruitment process. It is not always wise to save documentation beyond their established retention times.

Comment: Our IT person backs up email separately on different tapes.

Response: Great! This practice should be conducted more broadly. It serves both IT and records management well.

Comment: Some email clients can retain if tagged as such (for archives).

Response: True. I think the trick is keeping access to it once it is 'archived.' Also, we need to remember that IT defines archives as a 'back up' process whereas archives in records management terms are records that have long term value to the institution. Sometimes terminology can be tricky!