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Re: unopened mail



My take on this has been to open sealed envelopes only when they are not
sampled elsewhere.  For instance, where there is outgoing mail in records
from an organization, I see if there are two samples of the same
mailing.  I open one and preserve the other envelope unopened as an artifact.

Fan mail is probably preserved as samples (as opened and/or answered mail
elsewhere).  I would preserve it unopened but if a researcher were
interested in opening the mail would open it myself or authorize the person
in charge of the reading room to do so with care, for research
purposes.  It seems to me that item-level description would not be done at
the individual letter level for fan mail unless a famous name were
recognized, and that the only justification for opening envelopes otherwise
would be researcher use, except that of course glue does tend to migrate . . .

I would say that such collections need to be evaluated from time to
time--maybe make a note in the control record and on folders or boxes where
unopened mail is preserved, to evaluate for moisture, condition of unopened
mail, etc.  If high humidity is present, you risk having a portion of the
correspondence stick to the envelope.  In low humidity the adhesive will
probably dry and flake off eventually, whether the envelopes are opened or not.

At the very least, I would note that the envelopes in question were opened
by the archivist, thus preserving for researchers the fact that the fan
mail wasn't opened.

I've seen unopened mail in other collections, e.g., UCLA.

Arel
Arel Lucas
Tobacco Control Archives
Library and Center for Knowledge Management
University of California San Francisco
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/
-----------------------------
At 11:14 AM 4/5/2002 -0600, O'Brien, Jeff (Clerks) wrote:
Mmmm..... I'd say open them.

This is perhaps an appraisal issue.

Technically the contents of these letters do not represent a transaction
between the sender and recipient (because the recipient never read them) and
so the only thing they can really tell us about the creator of the
collection is that s/he got enough mail from strangers that s/he didn't
bother to open some (most?) of it. Nothing that any of these people said in
these letters would have had an effect on the actions of the person to whom
they were addressed. From that point of view you could probably chuck these,
make a note of their one-time existence in a "Note on Arrangement" and let
it go. In fact, it might be very misleading to have the letters themselves
in the collection unless researchers were aware that they were never read.

ON THE OTHER HAND! How could one resist not reading them? Unopened mail from
a bygone era... oooh... the mystery! They might have informational value in
and of themselves and they may be quite interesting.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Christine Moreland [mailto:cmorelan@LIB.NMSU.EDU]
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 10:39 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: unopened mail

I'm not sure if this question has come up before.  In the collection I am
currently processing we just came across a stack of unopened fan mail.
What have other people done in similar situations?  Do you open or not?

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