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Nasty, nasty, nasty



I don't know about you folks, but I find things in my collections that
offend me every day...kinda like television (but I still watch it.)

Obviously it is not our job to censor material, as the other postings have
stressed.  I mean, once you start, where do you stop?  If we allowed
archivists to discard material they found disagreeable, I can picture a
politically conservative middle aged male archivist gleefully purging left
wing leaflets from a collection because they "offend" him....(any
resemblence to the author of this post is strictly coincidental).

The bottom line is there are far too many "sensitive" people out there to
worry about when processing a collection.  Evidential value in archival
material includes the warts and all.  Maybe when you choose to scan material
for an online exhibit or otherwise advertise your holdings you ought to
consider these audiences, but when arranging and describing materials for
research use, just call 'em as you see 'em and let the researcher sort 'em
out.

Kim (wore an offensive tie yesterday) Scott

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