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Re: restricted collections



Any time a matter of security comes up (as in having a researcher sign a
form agreeing to the House Rules), I explain very clearly that I have the
rules to protect the records and avoid liability, rather than it being an
issue of not trusting the researcher. Works every time, but then I get few
researchers and have never had reason to not trust any of them.

Best wishes,

Thomas Berry, Archivist/Web Editor
Historical Construction Equipment Association
16623 Liberty Hi Road
Bowling Green, Ohio 43402
Phone 419-352-5616
Fax 419-352-6086
tberry@hcea.net
http://www.hcea.net





----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy Webb" <rwebb@LIBRARY.UTAH.EDU>
To: <ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU>
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2002 3:00 PM
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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>

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

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      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
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Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>