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Records/Archives in the News Part 01 01/20/00
Records/Archives in the News r991221a
There are 6 stories in this posting.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette 12/21/99
Moving the Frick papers to New York starts a family feud
Topeka Capital Journal 12/20/99
Archivist working to tell Haskell?s history
The Oregonian 12/21/99
State Farm ordered to return sealed records
Los Angeles Times 12/20/99
A paper chase through the maze of your medical past
The Morning Call 12/21/99
Frick descendants fight relocation of industrialist?s papers
The Chronicle (Willimantic Conn) 12/21/99
Coventry waging FOI war on Route 6
________________________________________________________________
Pittsburgh Post Gazette 12/21/99
Moving the Frick papers to New York starts a family feud
by Patricia Lowry
<SNIP>
Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Clay Frick and his daughter Helen were
lifelong, compulsive keepers.
School notebooks, letters, diaries, photographs and film reels, newspaper
clippings, architectural drawings, souvenirs and memorabilia; business
records from coal, coke, railway and steel companies; checks and receipts for
household goods from food to fine art?all this and much more is housed at the
Frick Art & Historical Center in Point Breeze. It is an extraordinary,
one-of-a-kind record of life in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania in the
19th and 20th centuries.
And in the spring, it could be leaving Pittsburgh permanently for a new home
at the Frick Art Reference Library in New York. Trustees of the Helen Clay
Frick Foundation, which owns the archives, voted 10-1 last month to move the
Frick family archives to Manhattan.
But a minority of Frick family members?three of Henry Frick?s 14
great-great-grandchildren?believe an art library in New York isn?t the right
place for a collection that is mostly about life and industry in and around
Pittsburgh. They say they will fight the transfer of the materials in court.
Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Legislature adopted resolutions
supporting efforts to retain the Frick archives in Pittsburgh.
?It would be a huge, huge loss to Pittsburgh,? said Martha Frick Symington
Sanger of Stevenson, Md., who spent 10 years researching the Frick archives
for a 1998 biography of her great-great-grandfather.
?These papers contain a wealth of information on the history of Western
Pennsylvania, its emergence as the nation?s industrial capital and the lives
of one the state?s most influential men and his family,? Sanger said. ?There
isn?t more than 5 or 10 percent that has anything to do with New York or the
Frick Collection.?
Frick, who was born 150 years ago today in a small springhouse on his
grandfather?s Westmoreland County farm, began the Frick Collection after
moving to New York in 1905 and established it as an art museum in his will.
Situated in the palatial former Frick family home across from Central Park,
it is adjacent to the Frick Art Reference Library, founded by Helen Frick in
1920, a year after her father?s death.
The Frick family archives belong in New York because the Frick Collection is
?the one institution dedicated exclusively to the activities and history of
Mr. Frick, primarily as a collector but also as one of America?s great
entrepreneurs,? said its director, Samuel Sachs. Beyond that, Helen Frick?s
life and work was mostly in New York, not Pittsburgh.
?The family as a whole felt that joining that material to the material
already in New York would make it easier for scholars,? said Townsend Burden
of Washington, D.C., a great-great-grandson of Frick and a member of the
foundation board.
The move has the blessing of the director and board of the Frick Art &
Historical Center here.
?We feel we are not competent to preserve [the archives] the way they ought
to be,? said Thomas Hilliard, chairman of the center?s board. ?The archives
are not large enough to be supported on their own. They?re used about 10 or
15 times a year, and they ought to be in a larger place so it?s more
economical to keep them. We would be the most expensive, if we fixed up a
place and hired the people. It doesn?t seem to be the wisest thing to do.?
In her will, Helen Clay Frick, who died in 1984 at the age of 96, endowed
Clayton, the Fricks? Point Breeze home, as a house museum and established her
namesake foundation, bequeathing to it the family archives. But she made no
specific stipulation about where the archives should be housed.
Sanger said that a few years before her great-aunt?s death, all of the
archival materials?Henry Frick?s papers in the Frick Building Downtown, Helen
Frick?s papers from her office in the Frick Art Reference Library in New York
and papers from Helen Frick?s farm in Westchester County, N.Y.?were
consolidated at Clayton. If Helen had wanted the family archives to reside in
New York, Sanger argues, she would have left them to the library. Instead,
because of a falling-out with the library board, Helen Frick left no archival
material?and no money?to the library that was her life?s work.
The Helen Clay Frick Foundation board is made up of a maximum of 11 of Henry
and Adelaide Frick?s descendants; Allegheny County Orphan?s Court thought a
larger board would be too unwieldy. Sanger said she was not on the board
because her work on the Frick biography could have resulted in a conflict of
interest.
The foundation had considered proposals from the University of Pittsburgh and
the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, both of which
stipulated that the gift be accompanied by a grant of well over $1 million to
catalog and conserve the archives, as did the Frick Library in New York.
?It?s important for us to keep collections like this in the region, where
scholars can have access to similar collections,? said Brent Glass, director
of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, who in October asked
the foundation not to move the archives to New York. ?There are several fine
institutions in Pittsburgh that could capably take care of these archives if
the Frick Art & Historical Center doesn?t wish to do so.?
?It?s a loss to Pittsburgh,? said Andrew Masich, president of the Heinz
history center. ?This is where the research on Pittsburgh is most likely to
occur because of the significance of the family to this region, and it would
have been a wonderful complement to the collections of the Heinz history
center, or at Pitt.?
Rush Miller, a historian and head of the University of Pittsburgh?s library
system, said, ?It?s certainly a very significant archive, and scholars and
historians dealing with Pittsburgh history and this region would have found
this material very useful. It means that they?ll have to travel to New York
to use it.?
Miller said Pitt?s Archives of Industrial Society, just two blocks from the
Frick Art & Historical Center, would have been ?the logical place to put it,
and would have been very accessible to the research community in this area.?
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
But with the archives housed at the Frick Art Reference Library, they will
not be as accessible to the general public as they would be if housed at Pitt
or the Heinz history center, and Sanger believes this is the real reason
those two institutions were eliminated.
?When the door was closed to keeping the papers at Clayton, my family members
wanted them under a family roof? where ?they?ll be able to control them,?
Sanger said. ?There?s nothing in those archives [for the family] to be afraid
of.?
?The sensitivity of family members who are still alive is something we might
want to respect,? said foundation trustee Adelaide Trafton of Topsham, Maine,
who supports the move to New York. But ?the intent of the foundation is to
make these materials available in a much more public way.?
Burden disagrees with Sanger?s assessment that the content of the archives
relates more to Pittsburgh than New York. Between 50 percent and 60 percent
deals with the Frick Art Reference Library, he said, with Henry Frick?s
business papers making up about 8 percent.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Burden?s interpretation is at odds with a 1997 report by former Frick family
archivist Stephen Hussman, who spent more than two years processing the
archives. After Hussman resigned, his position went unfilled, and about half
of the archives remain unprocessed, with their contents identified but not
fully cataloged.
Hussman?s report reveals that of 735.9 linear feet of archival material, 28
linear feet relate to the Frick Art Reference Library and the Frick
Collection.
The foundation?s decision to send the archives to New York wasn?t made
overnight. It spent two years exploring the question of where the material
should be housed.
?I think the foundation engaged in a very thorough process and made a
responsible decision,? said DeCourcy McIntosh, director of the Frick Art &
Historical Center here. ?I feel positively about it because the important
thing is that the documents and film be cataloged and conserved and processed
as efficiently and quickly as possible and be made available to scholars as
soon as possible. I know the Frick Art Reference Library has the capabilities
and facilities to do all that, and is motivated to give this archive the
highest priority.?
Asked his own opinion on where the archives should be housed, McIntosh
demurred. ?The decision is essentially one for the members of the Frick
family to make,? he said.
But in interviews in 1998 with consultants hired by the foundation to assess
where the archives should be housed, McIntosh freely recommended that the
archives be moved to New York.
The five consultants, all nationally prominent historians and archi-vists,
were asked to assess the importance of the Frick archives for research,
evaluate the appropriateness of both locations, and suggest what costs and
other needs would be associated with continuing maintenance of and access to
the archives.
While the consultants agreed with Hussman that the content of the archives
related overwhelmingly to Western Pennsylvania, they reached different
conclusions about where the records should be housed. Presented with two
choices, some were clearly influenced by McIntosh?s lack of interest in
housing the materials at the Frick Art & Historical Center and by the
eagerness of Patricia Barnett, director of Frick Art Reference Library, to
accept them.
Edie Hedlin, director of the Smithsonian Institution Archives, said the
facilities at Clayton for housing the archives were adequate and could be
improved, and that any negatives ?would not preclude Clayton from hosting the
Frick archives should the Frick Art & Historical Center wish to continue that
arrangement. It clearly does not, however.?
Princeton University librarian William Joyce recommended dividing the
original material among several sites. He suggested the possibility of
sending Henry Frick?s business papers to Pitt?s Archives of Industrial
Society, and New York-related material to New York, with copies of relevant
material given to the institutions that did not get the originals.
Darwin Stapleton, director of the Rockefeller Archive Center in New York,
recommended the Frick archives be transferred to New York, partly because
McIntosh believed ?the geographical location of the HCF archives makes it
unlikely that they will be as heavily used by researchers as they would be?
in New York.
Stapleton wrote that McIntosh no longer believed there was a need to keep the
archives handy because, with Clayton up and running, ?there were no longer
outstanding questions that needed to be answered, and that scholarly interest
in the site [and therefore in the archives] had been minimal.?
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Glenn Porter, director of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Del.,
found both locations inadequate and recommended they be placed at the
University of Pittsburgh, ?which already has in place the needed
infrastructure of staffing and facilities? and ?holds numerous other
collections of related manuscripts, books, photographs and other items that
provide the full and rich context into which the Frick papers naturally fit.?
David Hounshell, a Carnegie Mellon University history professor, recommended
keeping the archives in Pittsburgh, either at the Heinz history center or at
the University of Pittsburgh. ?My bottom line assessment is that moving the
Frick archives to New York would be a huge mistake.?
Although one solution might appear obvious?dividing the archives between
Pittsburgh and New York?the family ruled it out.
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
Topeka Capital Journal 12/20/99
Archivist working to tell Haskell?s history
Associated Press
<SNIP>
LAWRENCE?Bobbi Rahder stumbled upon the historic treasures of Haskell Indian
Nations University while cataloging century-old glass plate negatives five
years ago.
Now the university?s archivist is busy excavating the past to help future
generations understand Haskell?s unique role in American Indian education,
culture and history.
When Rahder?s mission is complete, researchers won?t need to call the
University of Kansas for information about Haskell.
?Now Haskell can be explaining its own story, and people won?t go elsewhere
for it,? Rahder said.
In May, Haskell was one of 62 national sites selected to receive $30 million
in federal grants through a program called ?Save America?s Treasures.?
Haskell?s share of $50,000 for its Museum and Archives Collections will be
matched with preservation funds from the American Indian College Fund.
Currently, Rahder and two student interns are sifting through the archives
that will fill a planned cultural center.
The grants will enable Haskell to:
Hire an art conservator to advise university staff on how to preserve campus
murals.
Pay for shelves, file cabinets, a digital video camera and videotapes.
Allow staff to microfilm the Indian Leader, the Haskell yearbook and
newspaper.
Establish a disaster recovery plan if art and other valuable materials are in
danger.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Donations and grants are coming from the Smithsonian Institution?s National
Museum of the American Indian, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other sources.
Rahder?s job is organizing the photographs, yearbooks, scraps of paper and
government documents that tell the story of Haskell?s transformation from the
U.S. Indian Industrial Training School in 1884 to a university offering
four-year degrees.
Over the years, boxes of documents and photographs accumulated in closets and
storerooms across campus. The disorganization hindered Haskell?s ability to
tell its story.
Now, each story-telling treasure is being archived, from the 20-year-old
school pageant program to a baker?s handwritten supply list from earlier this
century.
Rahder joined Haskell five years ago to catalog 809 glass-plate negatives
featuring American Indians in their tribal clothing. The pictures were taken
by Frank A. Rinehart in 1898 at the Trans-Mississippi and International
Exposition and U.S. Indian Congress.
While she was documenting the historic Rinehart negatives, Rahder said, she
began to learn more about Haskell. The first students were forced to attend
because the government hoped to assimilate American Indians to the white
culture.
?As I was working with (the Rinehart negatives) I realized Haskell has this
incredible history,? she said. ?It?s amazing to me that the American Indian
people have survived and prospered, after all they went through and what was
done to them.?
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
The Oregonian 12/21/99
State Farm ordered to return sealed records
Associated Press
<SNIP>
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- State Farm, the nation?s largest automobile insurer,
has been ordered by a federal judge to return case files from a consumer
fraud case.
In 1994, State Farm Automobile Insurance Co. settled a lawsuit filed by a
Eugene woman who charged the insurance company withheld medical payments from
her son.
As part of the settlement, both parties agreed to seal the case records.
But the documents were even removed from the courthouse computers. Three
advocacy groups filed a court case against State Farm, saying the files
should be returned.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan agreed. He ruled that State Farm
must return the files to the courthouse.
But Hogan also said certain portions of the file?including medical records,
claim files, and some State Farm personnel records?will remain sealed.
Trial Lawyers for Public Justice?which represents Consumer Action, United
Policyholders, and the Insurance Company Accountability Network of Texas
Watch?had argued that the people have a common law right to see the
documents.
That right has been recognized in 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals case law,
said Matthew Whitman, a Portland attorney representing the consumer groups.
?The court recognized that there is not valid reason for barring public
access to these court records,? he said. ?State Farm can no longer hide its
wrongdoing from the public.?
State Farm attorney Ralph Spooner said the company was satisfied with Hogan?s
ruling because some files will remain confidential.
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
Los Angeles Times 12/20/99
A paper chase through the maze of your medical past
Jane E. Allen
<SNIP>
Part of being an informed health care consumer means knowing as much as
possible about your medical history. And that includes being familiar with
the paper trail of your care, the medical record.
You may have more at stake than just being fully informed. What goes into
your record over the years may influence your ability to get medical
insurance and qualify for life insurance, and may affect even the way your
doctors treat you.
Basically, the record of your health history, diagnoses, treatment, test
results and hospitalizations for physical or mental illnesses belongs to the
doctor or hospital that took it. But the information is yours too. You have a
right to examine it and obtain copies.
If you encounter problems getting access to your medical charts, the law is
on your side.
Twenty-six states, including California, have laws guaranteeing you the right
to access your medical files. Although the other 24 states don?t have
specific laws, patients have the right to see their files, says Charles
Inlander, founder of the People?s Medical Society, a consumer advocacy
organization. ?You cannot be denied the information that?s in your record,?
he says.
Your medical records consist of files from all the doctors you have visited
and hospitals where you?ve been treated. If you?ve ever changed doctors, your
records probably do not reside in a single place but are spread among many
sites.
Traditionally, doctors haven?t seen the need to share the details. But as
patients switch doctors and health plans more frequently, they increasingly
want to know what?s in their records.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
California law requires that a doctor or hospital allow you to review your
medical records within five days after a request is made. If you ask for
photocopies, they have 15 days to get them to you. You pay the copying fees.
California sets a 25-cent-per-page maximum on copying charges. Doctors?
offices and hospitals also may bill you for the labor involved, typically $10
to $20, depending on the number of pages.
Once you get hold of the records, the next step is trying to decipher them.
If parts of the record, such as medical terminology, abbreviations or the
handwriting, are unclear, you can ask to discuss them with your doctor?but
that may be easier said than done.
Unfortunately, ?there isn?t in law a mandate that your doctor tell you what
[the medical record] means,? says Peter Lee, executive director of the Center
for Health Care Rights, a consumer group in Los Angeles. ?Many doctors have
an incredible time crunch. They don?t have time to walk you through and
translate.? Or they might not want to be bothered, especially in cases where
the quality of care has been an issue between patient and doctor, and the
physician may be worried about a malpractice claim.
If you are trying to decipher the medical record yourself, Lee suggests
consulting health reference books or seeking credible information on the
Internet, such as Web sites produced by a major academic medical center. Yet,
despite the best efforts, there can still be peril in having a layperson read
a medical record.
Lee described a situation he heard about recently in which a patient who was
reviewing her medical file was stunned to see the abbreviation ?SOB.?
Assuming the worst, she wrote an angry letter to her doctor. It turns out
that ?SOB? was no reflection on her personality: It simply stood for
?shortness of breath.?
Getting access to medical records while you or a family member is in the
hospital can be especially tricky. No longer are medical charts kept at the
foot of the bed, as in the old TV doctor shows. Instead, they are typically
kept at the nurse?s station, which can be intimidating for some patients.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Even when you?re aware of what should be in your record, it?s hard to know if
the complete file has been turned over to you. The hospital record has
documents that exist apart from your chart, like pharmacy records and billing
records.
Inlander recommends that people keep their own running medical record and
regularly review medical files. He suggests keeping a list of illnesses,
treatments and prescription medications (and any adverse reactions) along
with the most complete family medical history you can compile.
Having such information on hand also protects you, since medical documents
aren?t retained forever. Although every state has its own statute on how long
medical records must be retained, doctors usually can purge patient records
after five to 10 years. So if you?re after your old vaccination records, you
may be out of luck.
There are times when it is especially important to get hold of your medical
records, such as when you move to a new city. Your records should move with
you.
If you?re having trouble getting documents from a hospital or doctor,
suggests Inlander, try to find a sympathetic doctor who can request the
record on your behalf.
In rare instances, a patient must resort to legal action to force a doctor or
hospital to turn over records.
Deborah David, a Los Angeles plaintiffs? attorney who handles medical
malpractice cases, recommends learning as much as you can about hospital
procedures and policies. An unknowing patient who requests copies of the
record may receive a few typewritten pages that represent a fraction of
what?s relevant, she says. For example, there are preoperative and
postoperative reports, anesthesiology records, nurses? notes, doctors? notes
and medication records.
She?s particularly concerned about protecting access to medical records for
patients who may have encountered problems with their medical group or health
insurance plans. Those patients are trying to get sensitive documents from
the same organization that is providing them with continuing medical
services.
<SNIP>
________________________________________________________________
The Morning Call 12/21/99
Frick descendants fight relocation of industrialist?s papers
Associated Press
<SNIP>
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Come spring, a voluminous collection of industrialist
Henry Clay Frick?s personal and business records could be relocated to a
library in New York City.
Frick, who parlayed his coal business into a partnership with Andrew
Carnegie?s steel mills to produce a spectacular fortune, was a compulsive
record-keeper. Until now, most of the paperwork was housed in his Pittsburgh
mansion and art museum.
Against the wishes of a few Frick descendants, trustees of the Helen Clay
Frick Foundation (she was Henry?s daughter) have voted to move the documents
from the Frick museum in Pittsburgh to the Frick Art Reference Library in New
York, the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette reported.
??The family as a whole felt that joining that material to the material
already in New York would make it easier for scholars,?? said Townsend Burden
of Washington, D.C., a great-grandson of Frick and member of the foundation
board.
The move is supported by the director of the Frick Art and Historical Center
in Pittsburgh. The director said his institution is too small and would have
to raise too much money to properly store and document the collection.
??The archives are not large enough to be supported on their own. They?re
used about 10 or 15 times a year, and they ought to be in a larger place so
it?s more economical to keep them,?? said Thomas Hilliard, chairman of the
center?s board.
But three of Frick?s great-grandchildren are fighting to keep Frick?s papers
in Pittsburgh, where he made the fortune he later took to New York and left
behind as an art museum and reference library.
??It would be a huge, huge loss to Pittsburgh,?? said Martha Frick Symington
Sanger, who lives in Stevenson, Md., and used the papers during 10 years of
research for a biography of Frick.
??These papers contain a wealth of information on the history of western
Pennsylvania, its emergence as the nation?s industrial capital and the lives
of one of the state?s most influential men and his fami ly,?? Sanger said.
She said no more than 5 or 10 percent of the archives pertain to New York or
the Frick library there.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Sanger said that Helen Frick made a point of consolidating all family papers
at Clayton, the Pittsburgh mansion and museum. If she wanted the archives
housed in New York, she would have sent them there, Sanger said.
But Helen Frick had an argument with the board of the New York reference
library and left it no money or family documents, Sanger said.
Two Pittsburgh institutions, the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional
History Museum and the University of Pittsburgh, would have accepted the
archives. They also wanted $1 million from the Helen Frick foundation to
catalog and conserve the archives, the same sum requested by the Frick
library in New York.
??It?s certainly a very significant archive, and scholars and historians
dealing with Pittsburgh history and this region would have found this
material very useful. It means that they?ll have to travel to New York to use
it,?? said Rush Miller, a historian and head of the Pitt library.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
_______________________________________________________________
The Chronicle (Willimantic Conn) 12/21/99
Coventry waging FOI war on Route 6
by Karalynn Patrick
<SNIP>
COVENTRY ? Town officials have undertaken an aggressive freedom of
information campaign to develop information about the proposed Route 6
expressway plan called Alternative 133a modified.
During a special meeting on the subject Monday, Town Manager John Elsesser
told 55 residents about his wide-ranging Freedom of Information requests in
an effort to get more information on the project.
Elsesser said he has sent a letter dated last Thursday to state Department of
Transportation planner Mark Foran requesting all information, letters,
memorandums, correspondence, reports, studies, e-mails, phone logs, maps,
drawings or diagrams on 133a modified.
Such information would include any documents from the towns of Andover,
Bolton, Columbia, Windham or Manchester or from state Reps. Pamela Sawyer,
R-Bolton, and Walter Pawelkiewicz, D-Windham, as well as all documents to
U.S. Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Sam
Gejdenson, D-2nd, Elsesser said.
?We regret that we are forced to take this approach, but we feel that the
impact on our community is so severe that we need to gather information for
our citizens. Since the state has denied all public meetings, we had to
resort to this request,? Elsesser wrote.
DOT representatives were invited to attend Monday?s meeting but declined to
attend, saying public informational meetings would be scheduled after the
Army Corps of Engineers reviews the plans.
?The town council felt that it was important to share the information that we
have been able to obtain from the DOT. We hope to get your opinions in regard
to this plan,? Town council Chairman Joan Lewis said.
<SNIP>
PETER A. KURILECZ CRM, CA
PAKURILECZ@AOL.COM
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