ePADD Version 7.3.5 Alpha now available

The ePADD development team is excited to announce the release of version 7.3.5 alpha!

ePADD is free and open source software developed by Stanford Libraries' Special Collections & University Archives that uses natural language processing and machine learning to support archival appraisal, processing, discovery, and delivery for email of historical or cultural value.

This new version includes a new way to manage access to messages in the Discovery and Delivery Modules. The ePADD software is comprised of four modules, each geared toward specific users and phases of the email processing workflow. The Discovery and Delivery Modules are designed to be used by researchers to interact with processed email collections. The Delivery Module contains the full text of all messages that have not be restricted by either the archivist or the email donor themself and can only be accessed in an institution’s reading room. The Discovery Module is ePADD’s online email metadata discovery platform. It displays redacted email messages and redacted message headers to facilitate researcher discovery of email collections.

Archivists working in the Processing Module will now be able to select a new label to classify email messages – “Transfer to Delivery Only.” When an archivist exports a processed email collection from the Processing Module to the Discovery and Delivery Modules, messages with this label applied will only export to the Delivery Module and not to the Discovery Module. 

The ePADD development team added this new feature based on feedback from users who requested more options to manage access to messages displayed in the Discovery Module. Users expressed that they were encountering types of information in email collections that, while they may not rise to the level of needing to be entirely restricted (like Social Security Numbers, Bank Accounts, or Personal Health Information), they still may not want to display them online either. Some examples of these types of information could include personal addresses or phone numbers, shopping receipts, travel plans, or correspondents who request to be excluded from an online collection.

Do you have another use case for this new label? Please contact us at epadd_project@stanford.edu, we would love to hear from you!