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Ethics of Copies



I'm hoping that some of you might be able to offer some advice for a
colleague who is off-list.  He is in a rather delicate position concerning
use of, and copying from, his manuscript holdings.

He has a large collection of architectural / oversize engineering drawings
that document a company-built mining town.  A new organization has been
established to preserve and interpret the history of this town.  This new
institution has acquired a surprising amount of money, space and staff for
preservation of historic structures, interpretive programs -- and also to
develop a museum / archives facility at the site.

The problem is that this new institution has approached my colleague about
copying large portions of his collection that pertain to buildings still
standing in the town.  In some cases, they have simply said "we need copies
of everything about these ten buildings -- copy them and send the invoice
along."  They claim that they need them to carry out ongoing structure
rehabilitation work -- which he agrees is a legitimate use of the copies.
His superiors, however, fear they simply plan to use the copies to build
their own collection of town-specific archival material.

I've told him about standard professional courtesy in "not depositing
copies at other institutions," but this is an unusual case where the copies
will have lasting utility to the new museum.  The drawings were preserved
because of their evidentiary value -- now there is a primary need for them.
 Yet, on the other hand, he doesn't want to run the risk that the new
museum's archives will retain the copies and provide reference access as
part of their "public" collections.  My colleague is within an hour's drive
of the site.

How does he assist them in their work without undermining the uniqueness of
his collections?   We keep the stuff so it can be used, right?

Thanks in advance,
Erik Nordberg
Michigan Tech

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