Every day, many of the countless documents created on University and government computers vanish into the ether before U-M archivists have an opportunity to inspect them for interest to posterity. Which doesn't cancel out the seemingly opposite problem of bulk, with records often stored on a computer disk in no standard filing system. A folder named "Stuff" may contain one or two important public documents tucked into hundreds of "don't forget to pick up the kids" E-mails. Only a time-consuming search sifts them out. Even when a document is recovered, it may be a final, polished version, lacking handwritten comments that put a human face on policy because they show the debate that preceded the document's formal, completed state.

Add into the equation constantly changing computers and the software run on them, and you can see that archivists are facing a serious challenge. Because much computer software and hardware becomes obsolete within a few years, the National Archives now stores information only in formats that are independent of any specific software or hardware.

We're behind the curve'
"We're behind the curve" in responding to changing concepts of information, says Margaret Hedstrom, an associate professor at U-M's School of Information who has worked 20 years in the field of archives and preservation of digital information. "We don't have tools to readily identify what's worth keeping."

Hedstrom saw the loss of important information when she worked at the New York state archives before coming to U-M. For example, a statewide study to gather extensive data on at-risk children was delivered to the archives on a phased-out computer system. Information gone. She's currently researching how much has slipped away from the historical record. She believes it's a lot. "What survives, it's almost accidental in a way," she says. Someone just happened to be looking.

Which is not to say electronic records are a scourge. Certainly, storing information digitally saves money and space. And in some regards, electronic mail has been a godsend to archivists, says Bentley Director Francis X. Blouin. For a hundred years, telephone conversations siphoned information from the historical record. With E-mail now replacing telephone calls in many instances, the information at least becomes capturable, he says.

But archivists don't want to keep everything that's captured; they never do, whether the records are paper or electronic. In the paper world, though, people often keep distinct personal and official files, so it's easier and faster to judge what's valuable just by looking.

"Once we've gotten over the euphoria of having E-mail documents, we're wrestling with how to get the minuscule amount that's of interest," Blouin says. And, as it happens, there has been disagreement over what's of interest and what's a public record. Last May, the Bentley Library and the U-M's office of the provost for academic affairs issued a guide to help employees determine which electronic records they should save. A rule of thumb: anything that would have been filed in paper form should be filed in electronic form.

"I assume that anything I write on E-mail can be seen by someone," Blouin says. Most E-mail messages Bentley receives from U-M employees are printouts of the digital form. Printing E-mail messages is a common practice across governments and academic institutions, Hedstrom says, but it is becoming increasingly unworkable with the rise of multimedia technology. You can't exactly print out a document that has an audio or video file attached to it and hope to preserve the document's full sense.

In the early days, many regarded E-mail as casual, off-the-record exchanges. But as E-mail use grew, particularly among public officials, it became recognized as a way governmental bodies do a significant amount of business. That raised concerns that E-mail conversations could violate the Open Meetings Act, which requires public bodies to deliberate at public meetings, open to any citizen.

There's a general consensus now that E-mail can constitute a public record, says David A. Wallace, an assistant professor at U-M's School of Information. That feeling stems in part from a high-profile eight-year lawsuit known as the PROFS case, in which the federal government was ordered to release electronic records.

A private group of journalists and researchers had sued for the release of electronic files (created on a software package whose acronym is PROFS) from the Reagan administration.

"Societal Upheaval"
Despite the government's argument that printouts were sufficient, the US District Court ruled that printouts did not adequately replicate electronic files. Wallace maintains that the case reflects the "societal upheaval" over computerization and the fact that "mental acceptance of electronic records generally does not exist."

What is being lost in the shift to electronic everything? The Great Society three-by-five-inch note cards in University archives are the very ones President Johnson held and read from the podium at the 1964 U-M commencement. LBJ autographed the back of the last card. The yellowed sheets of The Snows of Kilimanjaro, published in the August 1936 Esquire, are marked with edits from Arnold Gingrich, a U-M alum who was Esquire's first editor.

These are tactile connections to history. Fifty years from now, will inserting a disk and calling up a text of President Clinton's second inaugural address produce the same thrill as holding a sheet of paper Hemingway himself rolled into his typewriter? (Anyone requesting the Hemingway manuscript actually would receive a photocopy, in order to prevent damage to the original. Still, the original exists on campus.)

It's hard to imagine feeling the same connection to history by holding a computer disk Clinton might have touched. But, Bentley Assistant Director Bill Wallach says, you never can tell. The digital environment won't replace the intermixture of intellectual and physical pleasure of reading a book, he says, but "we shouldn't assume someone will not find an artifactual value in disks."

Mary Jean Babic is a free-lance writer from Ann Arbor.