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greeting cards



To dispose of the greeting cards is to distort the content of the creator's
files.  Social relationships of individuals may prove very important to how
they conduct their official duties.  To assume, as an archivist, that any
such relevence would be immediately apparent at the time of processing is to
overestimate our power.  To dispose of those items out-of-hand because they
don't have information about "important things" is to impose our own
interpretation of history on the records created by others.

The importance of keeping today's greeting cards should be obvious to those
who enjoy seeing the cards of previous generations.  If the archivists don't
save these things, then who will?  The collections of greeting cards are
indicative of the custom of sending cards to mantain social ties.  The cards
are very important evidence of this practice and there is every reason to
assume that someday people will need evidence of such practices to
understand how they worked.
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