The Department of Special Collections at SUL is seeking to address important facets of stewarding email archives that have not been tackled in previous projects. We are in the process of designing a repository-based email software program from the ground up built on MUSE. The end goal is to produce an open-source tool that will allow repositories and individuals to interact with email archives before and after they have been transferred to a repository. It would consist of four modules, each based on a different functional activity: Processing (arrangement and description), Appraisal (collection development), Discovery (online via the web), and Delivery (access). 

Preliminary work on building a working prototype for the Discovery Module has been completed. In order to accomplish this, we requested and received two awards from the Payson J. Treat Fund for Library Program Development and Research and began a programming effort with Ixora Technology (founded by another SU graduate, Chaiyasit Manovit). Peter Chan is the technical lead for a team of programmers with Sudheendra Hangal acting as our technical consultant. The archival team is led by Glynn Edwards and consists of Aimee Morgan (University Archives) and staff at collaborating institutions (Columbia University, Oxford University, the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the New York Public Library).

A beta version for ePADD Discovery Module is designed to deliver metadata extracted through automated processing of unrestricted emails in two of our email collections: Robert Creeley (poet) and Richard Fikes (Stanford Computer Science faculty).

The Edward A. Feigenbaum papers, featuring more than 16,000 documents, are now available online via: https://saltworks.stanford.edu/. The collection documents Ed's work in artificial intelligence at Stanford University and includes administrative files, correspondence, project files, trip files, proposals, reports, reprints, Artificial Intelligence Lab memos, audio tapes, video tapes, and files on computer programs, mainly DENDRAL, MOLGEN, ARPA, EPAM, and SUMEX. Additional materials, including hundreds of audio and video recordings, can be accessed from the collection finding aid: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt500039hc.

The collection is an outgrown of the Self Archiving Legacy Toolkit (SALT) Project, a multi-year initiative within Stanford University Libraries to enhance the ability of the University Archives to capture, preserve, and add meaning to the life-work collections of eminent faculty and researchers and make them available and discoverable via the Internet. The project was seed funded by the Stanford University President's Fund and helped develop software tools to enable digital archiving of unpublished distinguished faculty papers.