National Council on Public History

My career has focused upon writing institutional histories for the federal government, almost entirely for the US National Park Service. I have been very good at finding relevant documents, assessing their historical value for my task, and incorporating them into a manuscript that park managers and the public can use. Until now.

Some of the most important documents I have used in the past have been correspondence files, whether internal within the park or external to community members and other public individuals. I still have those records, dating from the beginning of a park to about the year 2000. But then, the correspondence stops. Why? Because everyone switched to email.

The US government has a responsibility to save electronic communications, and the National Archives has been working on ways to save these files for the long term. But, first the files have to survive in the agency. And, here, the US National Park Service has failed. The agency has adopted at least two different email systems since 2000, and with the switch from one to the other, the old system and its emails have vanished. Unless someone printed out emails from their own system before a switch, the files cannot be retrieved. And who has done that? Only a very very few people.

In addition, from my understanding, emails within a system that are older than a certain date are automatically deleted. Again, they can only be saved if a person prints them out. Again, only a very few people have done so.

Why are emails/correspondence important to my work?

1. They provide background for issues. They signal why managers are even paying attention to a certain issue, event, person, etc.
2. They give the backstory about how public documents have been created, edited, changed, and dumped. For example, I might have an interpretive plan, the final and the initial draft. There may be some significant changes between the two. Why? I cannot know without emails/correspondence that is sent between the dates of these two documents. Maybe there were community concerns. Maybe budget cuts. Maybe institutional changes. Email is my best source for understanding why important documents look the way they do.
3. They tell a story. My admin histories are successful because they go beyond the “noise” of bureaucratic language. I give readers a larger understanding of why park managers acted the way they did. I tell a story about the way in which major reports were created, a story that gives insights into the issues a park has had to repeatedly address. These reports, such as general management plans or interpretive plans, are not just documents that are created and then implemented. They are keys to uncovering how a manager approached their work, what community members wanted and advocated for, who had power when, and what was the real end goal for a park.
4. They provide a chronology. Looking at a string of correspondence or emails by date helps me to assess what is happening when within a park. I can see if events/issues overlap and thus how parks are negotiating these multiple points of concern. I can see how one email string might switch course because another email string happening. I gain an appreciation for new issues because of how the email/correspondence shifts.
5. They give me insights into people. I can quickly identify the curmudgeons, the detail-oriented, the larger vision people. These insights help me to know who to especially follow versus who might be less informative. I can also find great quotes that humanize issues and make the larger concerns relevant and critical to the history I am writing. Who wants to read “blahblahblah” about a bureaucratic document? Who will learn more about park issues if they “see” the people on the ground doing the work and navigating the issues? Having quotes from real people doing the work makes the latter possible.
6. They are time-based. Correspondence/emails are dated, and thus I know as a researcher that they capture what is happening on the ground right then. That has a disadvantage, too, of course. I could get bogged down in minutiae. But, recognizing that I need to use these letters/emails/memos with care, they do provide an up-to-the-minute record of how an issue is evolving.

I could say more about the value of emails and correspondence, but I think I have made my point. They are so IMPORTANT!  But, they basically no longer exist.

What to do? What are my ideas for addressing this loss in records/documentation? What might be best practices moving forward?

1. Ask public lands managers to print out relevant emails. I cannot ask to sit at a government computer and go through email accounts. I can ask people I am working with to look through their email files and print out what they think is relevant.
2. I have asked, and I have been given very few printouts or email attachments. These are busy people. These are people who are not trained to evaluate their files to send me what I might think is relevant. They may be a bit unsure what they can give me, from a security/rights perspective. They may think the emails they have are just setting dates for meetings or other mundane things.
3. Do more oral history interviews, especially with people still working at a park. Oral histories are often done with longtime retired employees. These interviews are super valuable for gaining perspective on the big issues. These interviews are dependent on talking with people of good sound minds with excellent memories. But, retirees in general cannot be expected to remember the details of issues. In this case, talking to people still in the trenches is important.
4. But, people in the trenches are busy. My contracts for writing these histories need to have enough money and time given for me to do such interviews. People still being employed by the federal government may be reluctant to share details for fear of retribution or security concerns. These interviews still reflect memories and need to be considered within a larger realm of documentation.
5. Educate parks about the value of saving emails.
6. This approach will not help with a current contract. It will not help with a future contract at a different park. But, in the larger scheme of things, it might help build greater awareness as people move to their next assignment at a different park. It might make me feel better that I at least try to get the word out about saving records.

Best practices for public lands management—save emails. It sounds so trivial. So tedious and boring. BUT, hopefully I have made the case that emails/correspondence are an essential key for understanding a park’s history and thus helping public lands managers in the future make the best decisions they can for the good of the resources they are caretaking.

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