Computer
Guidelines for E-mail Management
- Treat e-mail the same as a piece of paper. If it would be an official
record on paper then the e-mail is too. Spend some time figuring
out which email is really a record. For most people very little is.
Get rid of anything you don't need to keep as soon as possible.
- Work out ways to categorize your e-mail. You probably have large
groups of things which are clearly not records, others which clearly are,
and some where itis hard to decide. You probably have quite a bit of
email which can be categorized by source which leads to automation. Figure
out which categories make sense for you. Any of: Vendor, organization,
date, cuntions (i.e. lab, billing, personnel, admisssions, legal, grants,
policies, general correspondence, etc.) depending on your job duties.
- Automate as much as you can. Any mail from a mailing list should
be sent automatically to it's own folder. Likewise any automated mail
from computers. Possibly send all E-mail from people in a specific
group to their own folder.
- DO IT NOW. You will never have time to go back and clean / sort
your e-mail. You need to categorize the important stuff as it arrives.
You will need to move sent items into the apropriate category manually
(probably). Some e-mail systems can be setup to keep replies wiht
original messages.
- Group it by year. Each new year, create a year folder. Move all
of your categorized stuff into suitable folders under the year. Do the
same with your Inbox (unsorted) and unsorted Sent items.
- Clean in stages. Remove obvious un-needed stuff as soon as possible.
Periodically sort each folder by size - then you can remove the biggest
stuff you don't need first and sace the most space. Consider removing
attachements from sent items and also from recveived mail if they have been
superceeded by newer attachments. Look over the oldest year folders and
see if some entire category has reached its retension limit. Note -
some categories of stuff may need to be kept long beyond any formal
records management requirements.
Dave Miran, Wisconsin State Hygiene Lab, July 23, 2003
