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Re: Ethics of Copies



> You had better tell me about this professional
>courtesy as well, because I find nowhere in the
>Archivists Code of Ethics or in the SAA/ALA Statement
>on Access any indication that archives should hoard
>their materials.

Now, now, Peter, who said anything about hoarding?

The professional courtesy I refer to is that "repositories should not
accession copies from other institutions without permission from the owner
of the original."  I encountered this in grad school in the late 80s and
came across it again last year in an SAA publication when I was addressing
the topic of "volume" copying for a column in the MAC Newsletter.

In hopes of continuing an interesting exchange, I'd like to quote a longish
passage from _Providing Reference Service for Archives and Manuscripts_ by
Mary Jo Pugh (1992 SAA Archival Fundamentals Series), p86.

In Chapter 7, "Copies and Loans," she discusses the copyright and
preservation issues connected to providing copies.  Yet she identifies an
important additional topic -- that of controlling the information stored in
our repositories.  I think her comments hit at all of the salient points of
this discussion:

"... some archivists and curators object to losing control over access to
materials in their custody and believe that unlimited copying means that
the contents of archival holdings are scattered, sometimes out of context.
Copies of expensive manuscripts have later been given to other
repositories, which in turn made the materials abailable to users for the
cost of reproduction.  Thus, some archivists fear, perhaps justifiably,
that making copies readily available will reduce the number of researchers
coming to their repository, thereby lowering the the use statistics that
justify funding.  For these reasons, some archivists limit the number of
copies or refuse to copy at all, especially if rare or expensive
manuscripts are involved.

"It is important to note that repositories lose control over the use of any
information made available to users, whether it is taken from the
repository in copies, notes, or the researcher's head.  The issue of
control is more an issue of access to information than one of the volume of
copying.  If control of information is the issue, then access conditions
must be addressed.  If information should not be disseminated, it should
not be open for research.

"In large measure archivists can control this problem: repositories should
not accession copies form other institutions without permission from the
owner of the original.  Likewise they should require users to acknowledge
that copies will not be given to another individual or repository without
permission, and require all copies to bear the name of the repository.
Requests for copies and citations to materials can be used to supplement
the number of researcher registrations as measures of repository
effectiveness.

"Thus, limits on copying may be needed for copyright protection or for
preservation, and full costs of copying should be recovered; but archivists
should not seek to control the flow of information by arbitrary limits on
the number of photocopies."

Perhaps the issue is more significant / critical to smaller repositories
whose collections are slimmer and more tightly focused on a regional theme.
 You know the story....young up-start archives come along and begin
competing in a small geographic area.   Certainly the fear of reduced usage
numbers plays into the equation -- real or imagined.

I really want this to be as black and white as Peter Hirtle at Cornell
draws it, but it is still kinda murky to me.  I agree that as professionals
we need to avoid personal and institutional dangers of custodianship (okay,
let's call it hoarding), yet is there something beyond the altruistic
"saving it for posterity" and "it's freely available to all" and "go forth
and duplicate" and "great public benefit" that needs to be safeguarded?

Have at it.
Erik  Nordberg
Michigan Tech

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