The Society of American Archivists has an excellent track record of publishing books on professional practice and this latest volume deserves to be widely read on both sides of the Atlantic and indeed is worthy of becoming a core text on all archival and records management training programmes. The author is an acknowledged expert on the subject of the ethical dilemmas of archival practice, on which she has been writing since 1985. Her consummate knowledge is presented in a clear, straightforward manner which makes the volume accessible to both the professional practitioner and to the lay person. It is both thought provoking and serves to illustrate the absolute centrality of the issue of ethics to archival and records management professional practice. She is absolutely correct in her assertion that ethical considerations and dilemmas concern all aspects of our professional practice, even its most routine facets, and that consequently it is a subject which we should all keep uppermost in our minds as we make decisions on a daily basis about our collections. This is particularly the case in the current era of profound change in the profession.
In a series of eight chapters the author discusses different codes of ethics; the ethics of acquisition; the ethics of disposal, equitable access, archives and privacy, authenticity and forgery and displaced archives. Each chapter begins with a discussion of the issue, proceeds to offer a series of case studies which serve as illustration and ends with a checklist of questions for the professional archivist/records manager to address. While it is invidious to single out one chapter, I personally found the chapter on the Ethics of Disposal particularly interesting as it confronted the divisive issue of deaccessioning. A firm believer in the necessity of deaccessioning in order to manage collections, I have often been challenged by colleagues who take quite the opposite view. The author presents both sides of the argument, and discusses the vexed question of selling collections, with case studies as illustration, all of which serve to underline the absolute necessity of having a clearly written policy and transparent procedures in place.
In the era of super injunctions, the discussion on access v. privacy is particularly timely. The author gives a brief, but extremely useful overview of privacy safeguards in the USA and elsewhere, illustrating the different attitudes to privacy and noting that the notion of privacy varies from one culture to another. She also raises the question of whether the battle for privacy has already been lost. (The chapter opens with a quote from Scott McNealy the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who, in 2007, said “You already have zero privacy. Get over it”.) Since the coming of social networking sites, which encourage participants to voluntarily share private information, people are surrendering their privacy of their own accord. Thus, while American students can and do post photographs of themselves in compromising situations on Twitter, for example, archivists must be guided by legislation such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, which established rules to protect data collected by universities on students. Students and their parents have access to the data, which is not otherwise released for research during the student's lifetime. As recognised custodians of private data on individuals, archivists and records managers are at the centre of the changes currently taking place as attitudes to privacy change and it behoves us, as a profession, to keep abreast with the changes, even if it is not as yet clear where the changes will lead.
These two brief examples must serve to demonstrate the value of the work as a whole, as there is not room in the review to do full justice to each chapter, all of which are interesting and relevant to our profession. The work has, in addition, a useful series of appendices: ten Codes of Ethics relating to Archives and Cultural Property, including that of the International Council on Archives; examples of Acquisitions Guidelines and Collections Management Policy; and a selective list of Federal Legislation affecting Access to Private Information. In addition there is an excellent bibliography.
As the author is American, many of the examples she gives and the legislation she quotes from are from the USA. However, she does discuss differences between American and European legislation, and indeed attitudes to ethical issues in general. And as many archivists and records managers now work in a global market this slight American bias (if it can even be so described) does not detract from the value of this work. The author succeeds in making it clear that we all, whichever country we work in and at whatever level of our career, will be confronted with ethical dilemmas, which we need to be able to deal with.
A mixture of philosophy, practical information and useful guidelines, I have rarely enjoyed reading a work of professional practice as much as I have this volume. The author is to be congratulated on bringing the subject into the mainstream, and the SAA for their perspicacity in publishing it. I recommend it to all archivists and records managers and hope that it will soon appear on the core bibliographies of all training programmes in the UK and Ireland.
