[Personal_archives] censorship vs. sensitivity

[Hobbs, Catherine]

Perhaps this points toward a future listserv discussion on privacy issues and privacy legislation?
C.


-----Original Message-----
From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu on behalf of RICKBARRY at aol.com
Sent: Fri 10/31/2008 3:04 PM
To: heather.dean at yale.edu; Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] censorship vs. sensitivity
 
In a message dated 10/31/2008 2:38:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
heather.dean at yale.edu writes:

Good  point, Rick, regarding contracts with donors.my guess is that it's best 
to get  everything in writing.
I don't want to monopolize the last day of the discussion, but Heather's  
reply -- please forgive Heather if it was unintentional -- suggests that  
contracting might not be a commonly required practice. If true, it is  a bad state of 
affairs. In my opinion (easy for an consultant to say, eh?), this  
requirement should be an important element of the ARM policies of any  institution 
involved in accepting personal collections, if for no other reason  as part of its 
risk management program. Without clear donor contracts, the  institution opens 
itself to possible large cans of worms, especially upon death  of the donor, 
the ultimate certainty of which is also something that should be  addressed in 
such policies. In one instance that I am personally involved with  at the 
moment in an advisory capacity, I noticed that some of a collection of  personal 
archives of a deceased military officer to a university (by one of  his 
children) to a university that is accepting them includes several papers  that may 
very well still be classified under national security laws.  Unless/until that 
matter isn't cleared up, the university could be at  considerable risk 
legally, grant-fund-wise, etc. It's especially delicate,  because to determine if 
such papers are still classified, the  university may have to subject them to 
review by the Department of Defense.  If they are, the university keeps its own 
skirts clean because the reviewing  authority will not return them, but at the 
same time the university may  inadvertently subject the surviving child (who 
wouldn't likely have even thought  about this matter) to legal consequences for 
possessing them in the first place.  My advice was to return those papers to 
the donor and ask that they go through  the process of getting the papers 
declassified before returning them to the  university for repatriation to the 
collection.
 
Regards,
 
Rick 
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