EA:BCC (Phase 4)

As critical documentation of life in the digital age, the preservation of email is central to the mission and values of archives and archivists. The project, entitled Integrating Preservation Functionality into ePADD (ePADD+), will integrate long-term email preservation functionality into Stanford University’s open source email archiving software program, ePADD. The enhanced product will provide the digital archiving community with a tool comprehensively supporting the email archiving lifecycle more robustly. 

Because the requirements of preservation infrastructure and workflows vary greatly across institutions, the enhanced ePADD will support functions for local customization and extensibility. The three project partners - Harvard University, the University of Manchester, and Stanford University -  will each utilize this capability to configure ePADD for their different organizational contexts and preservation repository infrastructures. The software development activity will align with open source best practices in order to support wider community contribution to ePADD and better software sustainability.

The proposed activities are a direct outcome of recommendations from The Future of Email Archives report, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which emphasizes the importance of better interoperability and integration between the many disparate email archiving tools that have surfaced in the digital archiving community. 

We are proud to receive funding in the amount of $100,000 for this 18-month project Email Archives: Building Capacity and Community (EA:BCC), administered by the University of Illinois. The EA:BCC program is a re-grant program from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation that seeks to build email archiving capacity in archives, libraries, and museums. 

Stephen Abrams, Head of Digital Preservation, Harvard University (PI)

Tricia Patterson, Senior Digital Preservation Specialist, Harvard University (Co-Project Manager)

Ian Gifford, Library Application Development Manager, University of Manchester

Jochen Farwer, Application Developer, University of Manchester

Jessica Smith, Creative Arts Archivist, University of Manchester (Co-Project Manager)

Glynn Edwards, Assistant Director, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University

Sally DeBauche, Digital Archivist, Stanford University

For updates on the ePADD+ project, please join the epadd user listserv or follow ePADD on Twitter @e_padd (#ePADD+). 

For questions or more information, please contact: Project contact information: jessica.smith@manchester.ac.uk