Overview and background

Since the early 2010s, Harvard developed and hosted a homegrown email archiving tool called EAS (Electronic Archiving System). In 2019, Digital Preservation Services (DPS) partnered with Stanford University, the original developers behind the open-source email archiving tool ePADD (Email Processing Appraisal Discovery and Delivery), to align the tool roadmaps, minimize functional redundancy between them, and enhance interoperability. This quickly evolved into the ePADD+ project, where Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Manchester collaborated to integrate EAS's preservation functionality into ePADD.

The ePADD+ project ran from 2021-2022, and in early 2023, Harvard decommissioned EAS and adopted ePADD as its primary solution for email archiving activities in 2023.

Using ePADD at Harvard Library

ePADD is a free and open-source third-party email archiving tool that supports email appraisal, processing, preservation packaging, discovery, and delivery. It can be independently downloaded, installed, and run, and Library Technology Services (LTS) supports an automated deposit pipeline into the Digital Repository Service (DRS). Explore the links below to get started or contact the DPS team for a consultation on getting set up.

• LTS wiki on using ePADD at Harvard
• ePADD User Guide
• Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) course on email archiving, including ePADD instructional modules
• Society of American Archivists (SAA) Using ePADD in Email Archiving course

Resources

• Join the ePADD community listserv
• Email Archiving Education and Training Resources