Finding Inactive Records on Institutional Networks: An Evaluation of Tools
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[Excerpt] The objective of this study is test select tools for their ability to identifying groups of records that may be inactive because of their age. Tools to identify batches of inactive records, such as the records of departed staff members or initiatives that have long ended, are often lacking and are designed more for IT departments to manage disk space. However, one such tool that will be explored is called TreeSize, and as the name indicates it’s focus is on identifying directory sizes in order to help manage disk space.v Despite this orientation, it does have some features that are useful for identifying records based on age. The other tool that will be explored is a script developed by the researcher called Archives Finder that aims to address some of the issues with existing tools for locating batches of inactive records. Archives Finder searches across unstructured network drives for the largest possible grouping of records that are a given number of years old defined by the user. It also includes a “fuzzy math” feature that allows the user to specify that only a certain threshold of files need to by X years old. This tool, as well as TreeSize, will be tested for their ability to efficiently and accurately locate records that may be inactive on unstructured network shares.