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Re: A Description Dilemma



Pay attention to the posting people.  This person is asking for your *help* in
how to describe these unusual letters.  She says nothing about removing,
censoring,  separating, or giving them away to another repository.  If I may be
so presumptuous myself, she would like your advice, not a self-righteous lecture
on archival ethics in response to something she didn't say.  Jeez.





Elayne Goyette <YEGoyette@AOL.COM> on 09/21/2000 05:32:51 PM

Please respond to Archives & Archivists <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>

To:   ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
cc:    (bcc: Cindy Knight/TMS/Toyota)

Subject:  A Description Dilemma



Dear Colleagues,

I've been processing a large and, at times, quite personal family collection
at The National Civil War Museum, made up of 26 binders containing between
75-99 documents each.  The date range is 1826-1891 and covers the letters and
documents written by three generations.  Family members have been, for lack
of a better term, housewives, elected officials, lawyers and merchants.

Until now the documents contained in the first 18 binders have given me, and
will give our researchers, a fairly complete picture of life in rural
Virginia before, during and after the Civil War.  Describing them has been
pretty straight forward...until now.

Binder 19 contains three documents that I would describe as filthy, and none
of them are signed.  I'm not just talking about the kind of filth that can be
removed by dry cleaning.  Portions of the letters are sexually explicit and
not too kindly phrased.  I don't know why the family has kept them for well
over 100 years!

I've never come across stuff like this before and wonder whether any of you
have, and if you have, I'd really like to know how you've described them, for
describe them I must.

All replies and advice would be gratefully accepted.

Thank you.

Elayne Goyette
YEGoyette@aol.com

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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>