The 2016 US Presidential elections may have presented the most prominent illustration of email and recordkeeping in public perception, but they offer only the most recent and public story of emails as records. This article offers an overview of the development of email as a government record in the USA, as well as the evolving archival perspectives on email and political accountability. Archivists have been contending with email for over 30 years, and from its earliest days in the US political usage, email has presented a complex array of recordkeeping and archival challenges, and we trace the changing archival perspectives and regulatory situations around email as a record in the USA over the past three decades. In this investigation, we explore questions about how and why officials create or destroy email, how email records are appraised, and whether or not preserved emails can be meaningfully accessed. In light of these questions, we argue that the archival tenet of accountability is tenuous at best in the face of the changing technological and political challenges presented by email as a record.

中文翻译：

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邮件发送和接收？关于记录的美国联邦电子邮件的观点和政策的变化以及档案责任制的局限性

在美国，2016年美国总统大选可能是电子邮件和记录保存的最突出例证，但它们仅提供电子邮件的最新和公开故事作为记录。本文概述了电子邮件在美国作为政府记录的发展，以及有关电子邮件和政治责任的档案存档观点的不断发展。归档专家与电子邮件争执已有30多年了，从美国最早的政治用途开始，电子邮件就提出了一系列复杂的记录保存和归档挑战，并且我们追踪了归档观点的变化以及围绕电子邮件的监管情况作为记录。美国在过去的三十年中。在这项调查中，我们探讨了有关官员如何以及为什么创建或销毁电子邮件，如何评估电子邮件记录，以及是否可以有意义地访问保留的电子邮件。鉴于这些问题，我们认为，面对电子邮件所记录的不断变化的技术和政治挑战，问责制的存档原则充其量是微不足道的。