Reshaping The Repository: The Challenge Of Email Archiving

Because of the historical value of email in the late 20 and 21 centuries, Harvard University Libraries began planning for an email archiving project in early 2007. A working group comprised of University archivists, curators, records managers, librarians and technologists studied the problem and recommended the undertaking of a pilot email archiving project at the University Library. This two-year pilot would implement a system for ingest, processing, preservation, and eventual end user delivery of email, in anticipation of it becoming an ongoing central service at the University after the pilot. This paper describes some of the unexpected challenges encountered during the pilot project and how they were addressed by design decisions. Key challenges included the requirement to design the system so that it could handle other types of born digital content in the future, and the effect of archiving email with sensitive data to Harvard’s preservation repository, the Digital Repository Service (DRS).