The “How” of Email Archiving: More Launching Points for Applied Research

from The Signal - What solution you choose depends, in the first instance, on whether you’re an individual or an institution. NDIIPP offers some high-level guidance for email archiving tailored to individuals (and smaller organizations) as part of our personal archiving tips, but this represents only one possible approach to an email archiving methodology. There are solutions available to individuals (including free ones), though some require more active management and resource allocation (that is, $$$) than others.

The Mobisocial lab at Stanford University has an interesting tool that runs on an individual’s computer called Muse. While not a preservation solution, exactly, Muse enables users to access and browse their personal email archives in a variety of creative ways.
Tools like Muse make it easier for end-users to access large collections of email without the collections being subject to significant upfront organizing, sorting or appraisal. Muse (and tools like it) enable a “bypass” approach that may be heretical to advocates of traditional appraisal, but its simplicity, ease-of-use and effectiveness make it valuable to individuals and small organizations that have pulled their email out of an email system but want to continue to access to the files.

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2013/07/the-how-of-email-archiv...