In this paper we describe new methods for the acquisition of emails from a broad range of people and organisations not directly connected with the organization responsible for the acquisition. Existing methods for acquisition of emails are based either on having easy access to an institution’s email server, or a labour intensive process of transferring the emails from donors’ email clients, involving for example visits to the individual donors.
Furthermore, we describe how different representations of the acquisitioned emails are ingested into our repository. The use of different representations makes it possible for us to perform a fine grained file characterisation, thereby facilitating the level of preservation watch we want in connection with the preservation of the acquisitioned emails.

Email provides a rich history of an organization yet poses unique challenges to archivists. It is difficult to acquire and process, due to sensitive contents and diverse topics and formats, which inhibits access and research. We plan to leverage predictive coding used by the legal community to identify and prioritize sensitive content for review and redaction while generating descriptive metadata of themes and trends. This will empower records creators, archivists, and researchers to better understand, synthesize, protect, and preserve email collections. Early findings and information on collaborative efforts are shared.