Question: Social Media as their own records?

I am a government archivist in the United States doing a bit of research on social media handling in government archives. There seems to be a trend over here where social media is expected to dovetail directly into one or more record series (in the records management sense of the term) that would have existed before social media existed. For example, publications and press releases. As an electronic records archivist this is posing a odd challenge as posts without some kind of local unposted version neatly filed within the series are not easily split up into the multiple applicable series.

I am trying to poll the wider community of government archives about:

  • Is social media scheduled as a record series in its own right?
  • If not, what have you found to be the best means of splitting it up?
  • If so, what is the disposition rule being applied? Archival, long-term, transitory, etc?
  • Has there been a specific tool you have found useful/effective in preservation efforts?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Brian Thomas

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Comments

  • I would be interested to hear different strategies as well, as we are facing similar challenges in regards to Social Media records.

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