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Re: restricted collections



Title: RE: restricted collections

My personal reaction to your dilema would be to remove the directions.   I know that sounds simpler than it is, but have you considered making a "patrons" book of the photos that would include digital copies of the photos without the instructions?

Lynne F. Wohleber
Archivist
Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh
325 Oliver Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
412-281-4928 x138
FAX 412-471-5591
wohleber@pgh.anglican.org


-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Webb [mailto:rwebb@LIBRARY.UTAH.EDU]
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 3:01 PM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: restricted collections


[Before I launch into this question, for the record I agree with Dean
re: taking things home to work on.  I wouldn't let someone take
something home to work on.  I understand all the problems, your
archives is cramped and they don't want to look for a parking place,
whatever; don't let the stuff out of the building.  I just had the library
development officer ask me if she could take a box of photos down
for the library director to look through, and I said no (not without
some trepidation, I'll admit; and if the director said do it I would
cravenly give in.)]

Anyway, here's the problem on the restricted collection: we have a
large and extensive collection of photos of ancient Native American
petroglyph sites, put together by a now-deceased medical doctor
from campus who sought them out as a hobby.  The collection
includes not only the photos of the petroglyphs, but detailed
instructions on how to find them, and therein, as the saying goes,
lies the rub.  Such sites are not only protected by the Antiquities
Act, they are under increasing pressure from many sides: people
just interested in them to scholars studying them to vandals who
want to deface them to criminals who want to saw them off the
cliffs and sell them to unscrupulous collectors.  So we've always
been cagey about letting anyone look at the directions, and never
let anyone photocopy them.  Public land management agencies
such as the BLM and NPS are also very reluctant to tell people
how to find them.

I could remove the record from the catalog and fall back on that
great line from Jocasta Nu: If it's not in the archives, Obi-Won, it
doesn't exist!  But seriously, despite my strong temptation to
transfer the collection to the Manuscripts Curator and let it be his
problem, we really need to have some policy about this.  It's come
up several times in the last year, and caused some hard feelings
among patrons who feel like we're questioning their integrity.  (It's
not that we don't trust them, it's just that we don't trust them.)  Any
ideas?  Does anyone else have a similar collection/problem?






Roy Webb, C.A.
Multimedia Archivist
Special Collections
J. Willard Marriott Library
295 South 1500 East
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  fax (801) 585-3976
rwebb@library.utah.edu

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