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Re: Archives Fires



The staff at one of the local courthouses here tells genealogists and other
reseachers "sorry, all those records were lost in the fire."

The thing is, that particular courthouse never had a fire.


Thomas J. Wood
Archivist
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
P.O. Box 19243
Springfield IL 62794-9243
217-206-6520 | wood@uis.edu | http://www.uis.edu/~lib-arch

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Ravnitzky [mailto:MikeRav@IX.NETCOM.COM]
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 7:08 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Archives Fires


I've always held that every archives needs an occasional fire now and then
to provide some plausible deniability for records someone doesn't wish to
release to the public or that the records center just plain can't find.
Something like:  "Oh, those records were probably destroyed in "the great
fire of 2000"".  Anyone who has investigated the GI A-Bomb veterans, for
example, knows what I'm talking about.  It isn't necessary that a lot of
records are destroyed, just enough so that anything missing or troublesome
that arises after that date can be said to have "probably been destroyed in
the fire".

Michael Ravnitzky
mikerav@ix.netcom.com

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