There is a growing problem for archivists in deciding how to account for the diminishing paper trail and the growing electronic footprint of modern life
LAST DECEMBER, a story emerged of difficulties in transferring all of the Bush White House electronic mail messages and documents to the National Archives in the US. Government officials, historians and lawyers pointed to a variety of conflicting reasons why the transfer of information did not run smoothly.
An estimated 300 million messages and 25,000 boxes of documents were the sum total of the Bush years, yet concern focused on how electronic information would be archived and handled. In an article entitled, "Bush Emails May be Secret a Bit Longer", The Washington Postnoted that the problems were exacerbated by the fact that "the administration began trying only in recent months to recover from White House backup tapes hundreds of thousands of e-mails that were reported missing from readily accessible files in 2005".
A Federal Court judge was so incensed that by mid-January he felt the need to lambaste the Bush White House over the missing files. Following a search that reportedly cost more than $10 million (€7.95 million) to locate 14 million e-mails, Judge John Facciola said: “The records at issue are not paper records that can be [physically] stored, but electronically stored information that can be deleted with a keystroke. Additionally, I have no way of knowing what happens to computers and to hard drives in them when one administration replaces another.”
The Bush administration was not unique – similar difficulties had also arisen earlier during the ending of the Clinton era when problems in the e-mail archiving system led to congressional subpoenas and a $12 million bill for trying to recover missing e-mails.
There were some reports that the Bush White House had actually minimised e-mail communication in the last year of the administration, focusing instead on voice messaging, which is less permanent. Yet, as one Irish historian commented, "Politicians and officials have always done business informally. Disraeli for example used to call into members of his cabinet on the walk from Hyde Park Gate to the House of Commons. Lord Salisbury would have them all down to Hatfield House. Seán Lemass destroyed almost every piece of paper he owned. Plus ca change."
BOTH PRESIDENTIAL transitions highlighted what has become a growing problem for historians, archivists and public officials the world over – how to account for the vanishing paper trail and growing electronic footprint that has become such a feature of modern life.
The changing manner in which we communicate has huge implications not only for archivists, but also for those trying to document contemporary life. Consider the following: should Bertie Ahern’s e-mail inbox be preserved for the public record? What about his mobile phone records, including voice and text messages? What should happen to Barack Obama’s Blackberry? Can someone’s Facebook account be archived for future generations? How would they be stored? Salman Rushdie bequeathed four computers to a university library, so is it only a matter of time before an Irish politicians bequeaths his or her e-mails to an institution?
Archivists, already clamouring to catch up with the digital revolution, are now finding it extremely difficult to cope with changing communications practices. Faced with ever-demanding researchers, who expect access to information and expect it now, there is a fear that many public records are in danger of being lost in the melee.
Tom Quinlan, head of records acquisition and description at the National Archives, describes the challenge now facing archivists as an “overwhelmingly large task”.
Incredibly, there is no one single person with responsibility for archiving electronic communications working within the National Archives. Quinlan says that the problem then is not one of definition, but of resources.
“Electronically generated communications are subject to archival law in Ireland. The National Archives Act doesn’t differentiate between parchment and electronic records – everything that is of public interest is accounted for. But there is currently no one in the National Archives who has a role specific to electronic archives, not even myself.”
Quinlan points out that e-mail is just another means of communicating, like the fax machine. Obviously it’s what’s actually transmitted that matters for the public record, and not so much the means. “Just like anyone’s e-mail inbox, those of interest to the National Archives will have spam and personal communications. The problem is not preserving the e-mail system. The problem is preserving the message contained in the system.
“At the moment, most government departments are holding onto e-mail documents through a policy of ‘print to file’. Yet some e-mail communication may have spreadsheets and databases attached and therefore it doesn’t always work for someone to print out these for filing. So one of the major problems we have is managing e-mail communications. There is no simple solution. If you go to any other institution, including the National Archives in the UK, they are facing similar challenges.”
Recently, a report in the UK recommended reducing the 30-year rule for archival material to 15 or 20 years in response to the immediacy of the modern age. The issue had last been looked at during Harold Wilson’s reign when rules on the duration of locking up public records were revised downwards from 50 years to 30. Should this happen, then Ireland will almost certainly follow suit.
WHEN SUBMITTING their report, the 30-year rule review group stated: “A rule that secured a break with a more secretive past has itself been overtaken by developments such as the televising of Parliament, 24-hour news, e-mail and web access and the unprecedented transparency of many of today’s public bodies.”
Essentially, the current issue boils down to the fact that we are in a far more immediate age. People are committing to paper a lot less and important files or communications, which might be of relevance to the public, may end up sitting in inboxes or hard drives and be lost to the public record.
“A feature of modern administration is that we expect instant responses to proposals and for decisions to be communicated quickly,” says Quinlan. “In the past you might have had a manuscript which needed to be typed up and may have gone through several drafts. Now, with e-mail, a draft may be sent to four colleagues. They in turn will make four separate copies, maybe saving some to their personal hard drives, and e-mailing back their revisions. So now there is a building electronic trail, and one of the issues we have is version control.”
IF THE ISSUE is proving a headache for archivists, then spare a thought for the humble historian trying to make sense of the electronic era. Economist and social commentator David McWilliams says he’s not all that bothered by the vanishing paper trail. When we talk, he has been sitting in a cafe in Dublin “people watching”. This, he says, is one of the best and most underrated forms of research. “My style would involve as much observation as possible and then going to primary sources and trying to substantiate what I have seen . . . what I try to do is to take a photograph of a moving object, so that I’m not faced with the same problem as historians.”
Dr Michael Cosgrave, a lecturer in the department of history in University College Cork, is one of those charged with training the next generation of historians to be able to respond to changing source material. “The vanishing paper trail doesn’t have that large an impact on the work of the historian,” he says. “What we are really trying to do, when looking at any historical figure, be it Louis XVI or George W Bush, is to understand why they made the decisions they made and to get inside their mind.
“EVEN IF A huge amount of source material exists on paper, it may make it easier to get inside their mindset, but there are no guarantees. The role of the historian is still about rigorous analysis of a narrow set of sources. Abundance of material can be deceptive. Personally, I don’t see the vanishing paper trail as a problem. Part of the thing is that we have always had to learn and teach students how to deal with incomplete source material – it’s what we do anyway as historians.”
Dr Cosgrave says it’s probably only a matter of time before e-mail inboxes are left to institutions, particularly when it comes to e-mailed drafts of important public documents.
“People have only had e-mail in the past 10 years and that hasn’t prevented historians from writing biographies since the start of time. I’m currently reading John Keegan’s biography on Alexander The Great; the fact that the fourthcentury king didn’t have e-mail or Twitter or a mobile phone does not prevent people from making reasonable evidence-based conclusions about his character.
“It’s all about people really, and while people do change with different cultural contexts, we’re still dealing with the same crooked timber of humanity.”
