News Release

Local angle: Durham

Tutorial, workshop address
managing information overload

By GRACE CAMBLOS
School of Information and Library Science

CHAPEL HILL — The situation is all too familiar: e-mail gradually piles up, until one day your inbox holds 1,342 messages.

Files nest deep inside the office computer network, never to be seen again. Or you spend hours editing a document, only to find that you’ve been working on the wrong copy and must start over.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University have been tackling this problem for three years. Now, they have created an online tutorial on how best to manage e-mail and computer files, available free at www.ils.unc.edu/digitaldesktop. They also will offer a free public workshop on the management tools and other findings on Sept. 23 in UNC’s Wilson Library.

Their project, Managing the Digital University Desktop, involves studying ways that employees at Duke and all 16 UNC campuses deal with the masses of e-mail and other electronic information that come their way.

"Information overload and e-mail management are insidious and universal problems that threaten the retention and retrieval of institutional digital assets," said Dr. Helen Tibbo, a principal investigator for the project and a professor at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science.

An employee may be able to find lost files and e-mails with search mechanisms, Tibbo said. But other staff who need to access the employee’s files have difficulty when there is little rhyme or reason to file names and organizational schemes.

"Managing electronic records is more challenging than organizing paper records, because users can create, copy and distribute files so easily, and because there is no apparent need to delete or organize material when storage costs continuously decrease," said Tibbo. "Since few computer programs – such as word processing or e-mail – include records management features, employees without training in information organization or archiving often are left to fend for themselves when it comes to managing files."

Besides the tutorial, the researchers have posted presentations online that can be used for instruction. The Web site also includes an extensive bibliography, links to associated resources and a list of frequently asked questions regarding e-mail and file management.

The Triangle Research Libraries Network and the Robertson Program, which encourages collaboration between UNC and Duke, will fund the workshop, set for 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 23.

The researchers will discuss managing electronic files and findings from their study. Lee Stout, university archivist at Pennsylvania State University, will be keynote speaker. He is a past president of the Society of American Archivists and a member of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

The commission, the grant-making affiliate of the National Archives and Records Administration, awarded UNC two grants totaling $253,135 over three years for the study. The researchers have a no-cost extension through Dec. 21 for the initial dissemination of their findings and to evaluate their efforts.

The University Archives and Records Service (http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/uars/) will conduct free workshops on e-mail management throughout the fall.

Members of the Duke research team include project co-director Timothy Pyatt, university archivist; project consultant Dr. Paul Conway, library digital assets director for the university libraries; and project co-adviser David Mitchell, a certified records manager in university records.

Besides Tibbo, UNC participants include project co-advisers Frank Holt, records service coordinator, and Janis Holder, university archivist; and Megan Winget, project co-manager and a doctoral student at the School of Information and Library Science. Consultant Kimberly Chang was project co-manager from July 2002 through last June.

"It was great working with such a wonderful team that blended academics and archival and records management practitioners," Tibbo said. "This project could not have been conducted without such a collaboration and the support of the UNC School of Information and Library Science, the UNC Academic Affairs Library and the Duke University Libraries."

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Note: Tibbo can be reached at tibbo@ils.unc.edu; Pyatt, at tim.pyatt@duke.edu

School of Information and Library Science contact: Wanda Monroe, (919) 843-8337 or wmonroe@email.unc.edu