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ENRON, RM, and lawyers (was Hunter lecture)



Thinking about Maarja Krusten's insightful remarks: I just taught
Booms's essay on appraisal and suggest recalling his description of what
German archivy looked like when it was in the hands of lawyers: destroy
all the old stuff! All lawyers working on behalf of an institution have
a conflict of interest; but so do records managers, the minute approved
schedules have to be modified in the light of new contingencies; and
archivists, the minute they realize that they are part of an executive
agency and the executive is on the firing line. Until we put all the
archives of the world on an independent and impregnable desert island,
the reality of archivy and records management is sometimes painful
compromise--yet another argument for documentation strategy. The narrow
focused choice of records that would save us so much space and make
arrangement and access so much easier would be great if it weren't in
the power of higher-ups to skeletonize a series with a single order.
Pat Galloway
GSLIS
UT-Austin

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