Some Confusions In E-mail Long-term Preservation

E-mail owns historical, cultural, legal and administrative value. It is a responsibility of human society to e-mail long-term preservation. However, compared with other digital resources(e-book, e-journal), e-mail has its own characteristics. There are some confusions during the e-mail long-term preservation.(1)E-mail capturing confusions. E-mail is a kind of information communication system which operating mechanism will lead to the diverse locations of e-mail storage, which means e-mail capturing confusions.(2)E-mail metadata confusions,based on functional differences, there are four kinds of metadata. The difficulties in implementing both the authenticity of automatically assigned value to some metadata elements and the integrity of e-mail threads will lead to e-mail metadata confusions.(3)E-mail body preservation confusions. There are a lot of format information which are very important to understand the content. The difficulty of choosing the format information’s preservation will lead to e-mail body preservation confusions.(4)legal confusions, which come from the separation of e-mail preservation rights and the absence of e-mail preservation laws and regulations,leading to the responsibilities of email long-term preservation are uncertain and the user’s information security is under threat;(5)e-mail system policy confusions,which could undermine the authenticity and integrity of email messages,is comes from the break of e-mail threads as a result of the automatic deletion of messages;(6)e-mail user behavior confusions, which come from the diverse uses of the e-mail account,leading to the message contents are jumbly and uncertain.