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Social & ethical issues for archivists and records managers



My name is Richard (Rick) Barry.  Anyone interested can learn more than they
will ever want to know about me at my website <www.rbarry.com>.  As there are
many resources on this list of interest to archives and records management
(ARM) professionals, as well as information managers more generally, I
welcome all members of this list to visit the site and its Guest Book.

I am delighted to see the announcement of this list.  In my opinion, its
emergence is both important and timely.  Why important?  There are just too
many cases in which records are being manipulated or destroyed illegally or
unethically in countries all over the world for professionals to ignore.  In
most of these cases, the professional associations and
national/state/provincial archives have been silent, feeling that it was
either not their place to speak out or take a position on such matters,
preferring to keep their statements largely to general codes of ethics rather
than comment on live cases; or because that it was politically too risky to
do otherwise; or because they might themselves have conflicts of interest.  In
 my opinion, there has been a void in professional leadership in such cases.

Why timely?  The globalization of trade and public disenchantment with
government programs has created a tremendously competitive environment in
both the public and private sectors creating great pressures to cut back many
traditional services, including those related to archives and records
management (ARM).  This, in turn, is putting new pressures on ARM
organizations to take innovative measures to replace lost budgets and
revenues, e.g., charging fees to the public for records the public has
already paid for once, selling records to commercial interests, accepting
donations from private interests -- all giving rise to potential social and
ethical issues.

This list is also timely because professionals are demonstrating greater
interest in the subject in greater numbers. To illustrate from my own
experience, last year, I was asked to do some seminars for a Houston ARMA
Chapter conference.  During our initial conversations, the organizers (Mark
Lagodinski and Guy Thomas) asked me about topics that I might cover in the
seminars.  Among them, I mentioned that there was not much conference
coverage on social and ethical issues.  They both picked up on that and,
despite the fact that they thought it might be risky, in that it might not
get a lot of takers, we decided that it was a risk worth taking and included
that seminar as part of one of the conference parallel sessions.  To our
delight, the session was both well attended and well received.  SAA has also
given this some attention at some conferences, but not that much.  The
Business Archives Section, of which I am a member, did a very nice job on the
subject with an excellent panel a few years ago that included Terry Cook, one
of the best of the best in this field.

Similarly, and underscoring the international character of interest in this
topic, I was contacted last year by the UK Society of Archivists with a
request to speak to the subject in an article for one of their publications.
This was agreed I wrote "<A HREF="http://rbarry.com/trust.html";>Keeping the
record, keeping the trust</A>," that was published in January 2000 and is now
accessible on my website in the Recent Papers section.  While professionals
in many other countries take open society and Freedom of Information as
givens, only now is the UK grappling with new FOI legislation -- legislation
that many professionals there consider much too watered down to make a large
difference in public access to public records.  ARM professionals are keenly
aware of the importance of these issues as they impact on recordkeeping and
vice versa.

Finally, while these issues are no strangers to the industrialized world
where we continue to experience serious civil society issues, they are
especially pertinent in developing countries where relatively new nations are
struggling to establish democracies; where the inviolability of records is a
keystone to achieving public government by law; where the links between
trustworthy recordkeeping and accountability, human rights and government by
law are understood and demanded by the public and are acted upon by public
policy makers.  This is well articulated in the London-based International
Records Management Trust <www.irmt.org> and its Rights and Records Institute <
http://www.irmt.org/about/randrpress.html> work, particularly in its
Information for Accountability Workshop Project <http://www.irmt.org/about/pre
ss5.html> in collaboration with Transparency International <http://www.transpa
rency.de/welcome.html> and with funding from the World Bank as part of its
anti-corruption program <http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/>.
  IRMT is collaborating with the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and
Records Managers (ACARM) in this effort.

Thus, I was really delighted to learn about this new discussion list and I
wish it the very best in terms of international readership, discussion and
overall success.  Since many of the issues are of equal interest to records
managers, I suggest that invitations be sent to the RECMGMT list and the
Australian, Canadian, UK and ICA archivists lists as well as to IRMT and
ACARM.  I'd be happy to assist in this matter if Peter wishes.

Good luck to the list.

Regards,

Rick Barry
www.rbarry.com

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