Researching the Researchers: Finding Out How University Employees Manage their Digital Materials

1
Researching the Researchers Finding Out How
University Employees Manage their Digital
Materials

• NHPRC ERR Fellowship Symposium
• November 19, 2004
• http//www.ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop

2
Thank You to

• The National Historical Publications and Records
  Commission
• for funding this project

3
Todays Presentation

• Overview and background of the project.
• Discussion of the methodologies used for data
  collection and analysis in this project.
• FAQs.
• Preliminary results.
• Challenges for archiving in distributed digital
  environment.
• Conclusions.

4
Managing the Digital Desktop

• NHPRC-funded, 7/1/2002-6/30/2005.
• Collaboration of SILS, UNC Libraries, and Duke
  University Libraries.

5
Thought for the day.

• The end-user manages e-mail.
• -ARMA Guideline for Managing E-mail

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The team!

• Tim Pyatt, co-PI, Duke University UA
• Kim Chang, Co-Project Manager
• Megan Winget, Co-Project Manager
• Paul Conway, Duke Library IT Director
• Janis Holder, UNC UA
• Frank Holt, UNC RM
• David Mitchell, Duke RM
• Russell Koonts, Duke Medical Archivist

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Project Goals Overview

• Understand how faculty staff at a public
  private universities manage their email other
  electronic files.
• Create guidelines based on records requirements
  observed behaviors for file and email management.
• Create learning tools based on guidelines.
• Consider the place of electronic records
  management systems on the campuses.
• Disseminate findings training.

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1st Year Methodology

• In order to learn how faculty, staff, and
  administrators manage their electronic materials
  we
• Conducted campus-wide surveys at UNC-Chapel Hill
  and Duke University.
• Interviewed 100 individuals.
• Interviewed approximately 20 IT staff.

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2nd Year Work

• We coding the data from the interviews using
  NVIVO software.
• We started to analyze filing arrangements we
  captured from interviewees computers.
• We began creating guidelines and settled on FAQs.
• Held focus group to review initial draft of FAQs.

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3rd Year

• We are essentially finished with FAQs for both
  email and file management.
• http//ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop
• We are creating web-based and in-class learning
  tools.
• We will more thoroughly analyze filing
  arrangements we captured from interviewees
  computers.
• We will match capabilities of software used with
  responses to interview questions.
• Write articles!

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Best Answer?

• Helping people become information management
  literate.
• Moving people toward better practice.
• Realizing that telling people to manage
  electronic files as paper has not been
  effective.

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Who We Surveyed

• 8,334 addresses at UNC.
• 17,327 addresses at Duke.
• About 212 emails bounced at UNC.
• About 1,115 bounced at Duke.

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Survey Questions

• Email application most often used
• Volume/time spent on email
• Attachments
• Storage practices
• Importance to job
• Specific Concerns
• Willingness to do further interview

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Top 10 Concerns Regarding Email at UNC

• of Respondents
• 23 Unsolicited
• email
• 21 Confidentiality
• 16 Time
• 15 Usage
• 14 Software limitations

• 14 Retention
• 13 Security
• 11 Management
• 10 Deletion
• 10 Viruses

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Top Concerns Regarding Email at Duke

• of Respondents
• 21 Unsolicited email
• 19 Software
• limitations
• 18 Confidentiality
• 17 Security

• 14 Volume
• 13 Time
• 12 Usage
• 10 Viruses
• 8 Retention
• 7 Lotus Notes

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Interview Protocol Development

• Went back to our original goals.
• To understand how individuals manage their
  digital desktops, both email messages and digital
  files.
• To devise guidelines, aids, and learning models
  to support improved user behavior.
• What are people doing?
• How can we improve what they are doing both for
  their own work and for the university?

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Designing the Interviews

• Started with the concerns that surfaced in the
  survey returns.
• Generated every possible question we could
  devise, in probably as inappropriate forms as we
  could.
• Pooled our questions.
• Used words like, appraisal, and authenticity.

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Developing the Conceptual Framework

• Categorized our questions.
• Because we are exploring how individuals are
  functioning as their own records managers and
  archivists, we linked our questions to basic
  archival functions.

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Framework for Questions

• Electronic files must undergo appraisal in order
  to assess their importance, potential for
  long-term preservation, and their recordness.
• In order to ensure authenticity, particular
  actions must happen and particular information
  must be created and preserved.

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Interview Framework

• In order to preserve electronic records, the
  digits and their context must be physically
  secured and preserved.
• Arrangement in a logical file structure can be
  useful in making electronic records accessible.

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Framework for Study

• In order for electronic records to be accessible
  they must be described clearly and adequately.
  Description can involve indexing, abstracting,
  and other additional subject analysis or simply
  file naming and titling.

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Framework

• How individuals view ownership of electronic
  materials and issues of privacy and security will
  influence how they handle the items. Thus, we
  need to ask individuals to whom they believe the
  messages belong, what rights they have to privacy
  of the message content, and how secure the
  messages/email system is.

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Appraisal questions

• What criteria do you use to decide to keep an
  email message? To delete one?
• What criteria do you use to decide to keep an
  electronic document? To delete one?
• Do you think any of the email messages or
  documents that you receive or produce in the
  course of your daily work should be preserved for
  years to come by the university? Why?/Why not?

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Authenticity Questions

• How do you save attachments?
• When you save an attachment, do you save the
  email message along with it?
• If you store important messages electronically
  outside of your email application, does the
  header information stay with the messages?

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Arrangement

• Tell me about your email/file folder structure
  that we see here.
• Get print-out of folder structure.
• Would you say that you use a similar structure in
  email and file directories?
• Paper file structure?
• Tell us about the file structure on your hard
  drive. How have you organized materials?

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Description

• How do you determine subject lines you attach to
  work-related email messages you send?
• How do you retrieve stored messages if you need
  them at a later time?
• How do you name electronic files?
• How do you retrieve your electronic files?

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Physical Preservation

• Are your email messages being backed up
  automatically?
• Do you explicitly back up your email messages?
• Are your electronic files (documents, images,
  etc.) automatically backed up?
• Do you keep copies of all the messages you send?
  If so, where/how do you keep these?
• How do you store important messages?

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Privacy Security

• Is your email yours or the universitys? Other
  files on your UNC computer?
• Who owns your email? (Ownership vs. intellectual
  property issues with this question)
• Who can has the ability to read your email
  without your permission? Your electronic files?
• Do you distinguish between "official" and
  personal email? Do you manage and store them
  differently?
• UNC ONLY Have you heard of the Public Records
  law in North Carolina?

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Interview Participants

• Goal was to interview a wide cross-section of
  faculty, staff, and administrators at both
  campuses.
• Only selected people who indicated they wished
  further involvement after the survey.

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Interviews

• We conducted 100 interview during spring and
  summer of 2003.
• Most averaged 45 minutes in length with some over
  an hour, some briefer.
• One person interviewed another took notes in a
  spreadsheet.

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Life After Coding

• Next step was to make charts and tables for as
  many quantifiable questions as possible.
• Highlight useful and telling quotations within
  notes.
• Explore data topically.

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Preliminary Conclusions

• People do not, in large part, manage their
  electronic files as their print files, at least
  not at universities.
• Telling folks to manage digital assets as they do
  their paper files appears to have little effect.
• We have lost the largest cadre of records
  professionals many, many secretaries.
• Unlikely most universities will have
  enterprise-wide ERMS or that there would be a
  high degree of compliance.

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Management for Now, Not Later

• People have little problem finding their own
  materials, although this situation may be
  deteriorating.
• Archival theory has been built on existing
  information retrieval systems and naturally
  occurring metadata.
• Computer searching, in large part, negates the
  need for folders, whether archivist like it or
  not.

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Challenges

• Distributed document creation.
• Capture important material before it dies.
• A living archive where records go from the
  moment of their creation?
• ERMS?
• Training creators?
• Combination?

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Challenges

• Preservation of context and authenticity.
• Metadata, metadata, metadata.
• Distributed metadata creation (or automated) with
  centralized control of records.

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Challenges

• Need for people to be information management
  literate.
• If not ubiquitous archiving then
• Ubiquitous pre-archiving.
• Distributed implementation of organizational
  policy.
• Need for responsible appraisal.
• If we dont need it dont ask someone to take the
  time to curate it.

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Challenges

• Recognition that record creators are partners in
  this enterprise
• Not the enemy
• Generally not evildoers
• Frequently overworked
• Smart enough not to want to waste their time.

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Archival Response

• Archivists, in conjunction with the IT community
  researchers and software developers must
  devise mechanisms to preserve context over time
  when creators dont provide it.

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Triangulated Solution

• A digital archiving solution must involve
• An understanding of how individuals manage
  electronic records in various settings.
• Inexpensive, ubiquitous software that factors in
  human information behaviors and the needs
  inherent in the archiving process, i.e.,
  preserving the bits over time maintaining
  context and preserving authenticity.

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Triangulated Solution

• A focus on dealing with the most important and
  most risky records and materials, i.e., a 90/10
  rule where individuals are taught
• to carefully maintain the most important
  evidential/historical/mission critical materials
  and
• to delete (within legal and regulatory
  requirements) the most risky materials.

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Project URL

• http//ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop
• Thank you!