Brooklyn Academy of Music — BAM Hamm Archives
Written by Evelyn Shunaman on Thu, 03/03/2016 – 18:00
The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) has adopted a policy of email retention for its executives based on the Capstone recommendations of SAA. All executive email is permanently retained. Other staff members are advised to store important emails in relevant digital subject folders that are then forwarded to the Archives as part of the regular digital records retention policy.
However, only the first step – implementing a system to save executive email permanently – has been taken so far. The Archives still needs to determine when and how to ingest these records. The current plan is to transfer an executive’s email to the Archives at the end of his/her tenure. Is that the best policy? How can sensitive issues be identified? Should there then be selection? Redaction? Restrictions imposed? Is additional metadata important, or will search capabilities make adding metadata unnecessary? What type of description is appropriate? Moreover, in light of the recent University of Oregon controversy, what is an appropriate access policy to these unique records?
The BAM Hamm Archives needs a Metro Fellow to research how other institutions implement their email archiving in order to determine best practices and develop a plan on how best to implement the Capstone policy for an institution of our size.