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Re: Nasty, nasty, nasty



Maybe I'm way off on a tangent here, but there are some correlations.......I just did a display for our library regarding banned and challenged books.  Next week is the official BANNED BOOKS WEEK.  I'm thinking just the whole notion of what one person finds offensive, others may not.  It's the idea of one person (or people) being in a position to determine what people can read, or in this case, research.  There are a few items in our archive collection here that document "uncomfortable moments" for the institution, but they really did happen, whether they portray things good or bad, they are the REAL history.  

"Where's Waldo?" was banned (!?)  I heard it was because he was naked on one of the pages (?).

>>> kascott@MONTANA.EDU 09/22/00 09:28AM >>>
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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