Ethics and Reference Services

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Ethics and Reference ServicesElena S. Danielson aa Hoover Institution Archives , Stanford University ,Stanford, CA, 94305-6010, USAPublished online: 20 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Elena S. Danielson (1997) Ethics and Reference Services, TheReference Librarian, 26:56, 107-124, DOI: 10.1300/J120v26n56_09

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Ethics and Reference Services

Elena S. Danielson

SUMMARY. Reference archivists face challenging ethical dilemmas in the course of seemingly mundane daily tasks. While newly revised ethical codes provide helphl guidelines, thcre are many ethical questions without clear answers. Rapidly evolving technology, changing expectations, and inconsistcnt privacy laws place pressures on reference work. These issues also open a window on the society whose cultural property archivists manage. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Sewice: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail addrrss: [email protected]~]

A REFERENCE REQUEST FROM THE UNITED STATES

In 1992, the director of the Russian Government's intelligence archives received a rcference request from the United States. An American asked for a search of confidential files on intemational espionage for any evidence that he, once a high ranking U.S. State Department official, had served as a Sovict agent in the 1930s and 1940s. The Russian archival official responded in the spirit of international cooperation, democratic openness, and high ideals. Although very busy with his own research and writing, Dmitri A. Volkogonov, who was then chairman of the Russian Government's military intelligence archives, directed his staff to search files in both the military and foreign intelligence archives for any reference to this American. On October 14, 1992, Volkogonov wrote in a refer-

Elena S. Danielson is Associate Archivist, Hoover Institution Archives, Stan- ford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010.

(Ilnwonh co-indexing enny notc]: "k:lllics and Rcrcrencc Scrviccs." Dnnlclsun. Elunu S. Co-published simultnneouslv in i'lw Rele,riice Lihrarin~i fThe Hawonh Press. Inc No 56. 1997. m . 107-124. ~ ~ . . . and: Rejhrenue ~ e r v k r s ~ o r ~ r h v e s a~id~ni i#rsc&e (ed: Laura €3. ~ohe") The Haworth Press, lnc.;

. 1997. pp. 107-124. Single or multiple copies o f this article are available for a fee from The llaworth Document Delively Service [ I -800-342-9678.9:00 a.m. - S:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: gelinfo@ hawor~h.com].

O 1997 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 107

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108 REFERENCE SERVICES FOR ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS

ence letter and confirmed on videotape: "Mr. A. HISS had never and nowhere been recruited as an agcnt of the intelligence services of the USSR. Not a single document, and a great amount of materials has been studied, substantiates the allegation that Mr. A. Hiss collaborated with the intelligence services of the Sovict Union." Once made public, this reference lctter touched off an international debate, with various experts and experienced historians questioning the evidence used and challenging the conclusions reached. A frequent complaint was that Volkogonov could not possibly have examined all of the possible documentation, which is known to be vast, scattered in various repositories, and not easily evaluated. Asked about the case in November, Volkogonov explained that his staff had examined records regarding payments to spies, and did not find any mention of Hiss. By December, Volkogonov complained that he was mis- understood, "I only looked through what the KGB had," he explained, and hc was "a bit taken aback" by the commotion his letter received.' Volkogonov was an experienced politician, a general, and a respected historian. None of this extensive background prepared him for the ethical problems of archival reference servicc.

While few reference letters are so controversial, there are several ele- mcnts in this particular case that do recur frequently, if less dramatically, in archival rcfcrence work. The first is the problem of selective access to archives. Equitable access is a wcll recognized principle, the value of which becomes self-evident with experiencc. If documents are open to one user, they should be open to all researchcrs so that conclusions can be verified by others. In an ideal situation, the American could have gone through the rccords and interprcted thcm himself, and then others could have also examined the files and come up with independent conclusions. Archivists are frequently under pressure to providc selective access for all kinds of good reasons. An organization or individual donor will closc a collection deemed sensitive, then try to open it to onc trusted scholar, typically a hagiographer. Vcrifying the research of othcr historians is a complex process that is essential to attaining an accuratc picture of history, because of differing interpretations of the same documents. Archives per- ceived as blocking this process simply lose c r ed ib i~ i t~ .~

An added problem occurs when archivists reserve documents to themselves, publish their own version of evcnts, and prevent others from using that samc material. This issue was closely examined by thc American historical and archival professions in the wake of the so-called "Lowcn- heim case," in which a prcsidcntial library was accused of withholding documentation from research, so that the staff could publish the materials first.3 Over time a clear consensus has been achieved on this issue. Archi-

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Elena S. Danielsor~ 109

vists are recognized as having the same rights to conduct research as anyone else, and are encouraged to do so, as long as they do not use their professional role to block others from access. The now deceased General Volkogonov took advantage of a period of political openness to publish several important biographies that drew on otherwise closed intelligence files. These works are the sole window on those documents. For this rcason the conclusions, however profound, will be suspect until they can be independently verified.

A third element in the case is the difference between supplying information about the archives and supplying information from the archives. The first role is very traditional and well understood. Providing collection- level descriptions and item level registers has long bccn a routine part of archival reference service. Increasingly, archivists are being asked to take on the second role, and become purveyors of information. This issue has not yet been resolved, and will no doubt become more pressing with shifts in technology and in the demands of the electronic age. Reference archivists are aware of the danger of not cooperating with this demand and being pushed aside by market forces in favor of information specialists. As a basic rule, supplying positive information is safer than supplying negative results. It is one thing to recover a document that demonstrates that a person is eligible for a pension; it is a very different intellectual process to survey the documentation and conclude that it does not contain evidence of wrongdoing. This distinction will be recognized, especially in the case of large masses of documents.

This point brings up a fourth area: the ethical problems inherent in the vast scope of twentieth century archives. A reference search cannot be as exhaustive in a large, modern collection as it is in the more contained records of an earlier age. In addition, less intellectual control means inevitably that sensitive materials are harder to screen. If a decision is made to serve large, unscrecned collections in the interest of the free flow of information, the result is that papers of a personal nature, theoretically protected by privacy laws, will be made public, and the repository should be braced for possible litigation. Thc usc of technology to cope with the flood of data has in effect made the privacy issue more difficult rather than less. It is one thing when an isolated historian looks at a private letter in a quiet reading room, it is different to have that letter available on the Internet for millions to see instantly.

With voluminous records, archivists may find something on a given topic, but probably cannot be expected to find everything. All reference requests are not equivalent, and should not be treated the same. In cases involving allegations of criminal wrongdoing, reference archivists are often

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asked to locate documcnts that are in essence legal evidence. The search should be facilitated by archivists and conducted by investigators. This type of request nccds a different approach from a genealogist's routine question about his grandparents' residence. The Archivist S Code of Ethics mandates a courteous and helpful response to all reasonable questions. Vcry oftcn thc level of helpfulness that is possible is in inverse proportion to the gravity of thc query.

The problems that General Volkogonov encountered with his reference lettcr differ only in scale with the ethical dilemmas that reference archivists contend with on a daily basis. It is clear that guidelines arc hclphl even if they do not resolve questions definitively. Over the years various efforts have been made to codify archival ethics. They will have to contin- ue to evolve to cope with a changing society and with accelerating com- munications technology. Thcre are several distinct areas that need to be thought through carefully in the light of the ethics guidelines. One is almost a moral issue relating to the obligations of accepting ownership of cultural property. The expansion of the Internet poses an array of issues for the archival profession. Both of these areas raise questions about the extent of archivists' obligations to supply information from their holdings above and bevond classical descridion. The thorniest area remains the conundrum of respecting privacy in an open society that with the Internet is increasingly becoming a wide-open society.

CODIFICATION OF REFERENCE ETHICS

In the first half of the 1990s, three influential organizations in the information business conducted detailed rcviews of their ethical codes. After extensive discussions, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) issued a revised code in 1992 with a commentary. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Rcsearch Libraries approved a new set of standards in 1993 after five years of formal deliberations. In 1995 the Council of the American Library Association approvcd a revised ALA Code ofEthics. (These codes provide a context for the ALA-SAA Joint Statement on Access, which addresses some the most basic ethical dilemmas.) It is not completely clear why ethics became a general preoccupation at this point in history for archivists and librarians, not a group typically accused of widespread corruption. In all likelihood, burgeoning information industrics, fueled by phenomenal advances in technology, have made long-standing concerns much more pressing. All thrcc codes address the issue of ethical reference services, but in very different ways.

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The SAA code gives relatively brief attention to the ethics of reference services. The overriding preoccupation is with potential conflicts of interest that arise out of the sensitive donor and dealer relations that are key to acquiring unique materials. Reference services are addressed primarily in connection with two points. First is the unequivocal recommendation to minimize donor-mandated restrictions on use: "Archivists discourage un- reasonable restrictions on access or use, but may accept as a condition of acquisition clearly stated restrictions of limited duration and may occasionally suggest such restrictions to protect privacy." The main articlc on reference in the Code ofEthics for Archivists addrcsses the issue of equitable use: "Archivists answer courteously and with a spirit of helpfulness all reasonable inquiries about their holdings, and encourage use of them to the greatest extent compatible with institutional policies, preservation of holdings, legal considerations, individual rights, donor agreements, and judicious use of archival resources. They ex lain pertinent restrictions to potential users, and apply them equitably.''PNote that full use is qualified by a list of six potential limitations. By the time all of the institutional, preservation, legal, privacy, donor, and judicious limitations have been taken into consideration, it is surprising the archives can be used at all. This easy acceptance of limitations on use seems at odds with the SAA manual on reference services, published the same year, that states: "Ar- chives are tools: and like all tools, they are kept to be used."S

It is important to note that the SAA code provides for equitable access rather than equal access. The ideal is that each repository is open to all members of the public on equal terms. Equitable access gives a repository the right to define its primary clientelwn important consideration for private archives such as business and banking archives that primarily contain proprietary information. Even for public archives, some clients will require more cxtensive help than others, and mechanistically equal treatment would not make sense.

In 1995 the SAA established a standing committee of ethics and professional conduct with a very broad mandate to review the code in response to societal, legal or judicial and technological developments. The Society also formed a group called thc Privacy and Confidentiality Roundtable that meets annually to review case studies, in which freedom of information and privacy rights come into conflict. This conflict is a problcm for both management policy makers and reference archivists. Despite the brief coverage of thc reference role in the of5cial code, the SAA is conducting extensive discussions on this topic.

Even more than the SAA code, the new RBMS Standards for Ethical Conduct is also overwhelmingly concerned with fiduciary integrity in the

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I12 REFERENCE SERVICES FOR ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS

face of potential conflicts of interest. They primarily address issues of personal collecting, personal dealing, outside employment and the acceptance of gifts. The statement does emphasize the position of trust held by archivists and manuscript librarians to provide access to the "records of knowledgc in their care." The centrality of use to the purpose of a repository is recognized in the statement: "To the fullest extent permissible by donor and legal requirements, library access policies should further the goals of scholarship for which the collections are maintained."6

By far the strongest mandate for reference services is found in the 1995 ALA Code of Ethics. The preamble sets the tone: "In a political system grounded in an informed citizenry, we are members of a profession explic- itly committed to intellectual freedom and the freedom of access to information. We have a special obligation to ensure the free flow of information and ideas to present and future generations." Nowhere does the ALA code refer to books. It covers information resources, presumably covering all sources of information from books to manuscripts and archives. The first article is unequivocal: "We provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests."' Rather than enter a plea for minimizing restrictions on use, the code mandates a strong and open use policy as the basis of the profession and essential to ethical conduct.

There are historical reasons for the difference in emphasis between the ALA code and the SAA and RBMS codes. The public library movement was founded on the principle of free and open access to information as a prerequisite for a free society. Archival repositories, on the other hand, evolved to meet the requirements of institutional or governmental execu- tives, or in the case of manuscript repositories, an elite circle of gentlemen scholars. Mary Jo Pugh found the embodiment of the latter attitude in an article by Howard Peckham in the American Archivisl: "If it [the rcpository] should open its doors to competent scholars, then it should closc them to those who are not competent."* In general, however, the trend among archivcs has increasingly been to open access to a broad public, and to come closer to the spirit of thc public library tradition. The free flow of information is seen as a public good that can outweigh other considerations. Whether that information is found in books, manuscripts or electronic form is relevant to the way it can be used, but not to the need for open access.

In 1995, an interesting court casc supported the principle of greater public good. A tobacco company's internal documents relating to the health hazards of smoking were surreptitiously copied and sent anony-

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Elena S. Danielsoti 113

mously to a university professor. Whcn the professor deposited his papers in the university archives, the archivists opened them for public access. The company sued to remove the disputed materials, but the court held that the archives had a legal right to release the documents. The archivists felt that they had an ethical obligation to open them, despite the legal infractions involved in the chain of events that brought the documcnts to the archives. Such ethical obligations require an ability to withstand political pressures and the stress of litigation. In this particular case the stress was severe and imposed a serious burden on the staff: private investigators came to the reading room to obscrvc who used the papers. Previous generations of archivists have often taken shelter in legalisms and simply restricted materials that might invite controversy.9 Public opinion is shifting on this issue, and in the near future it may well become more of a liability to restrict controversial materials than to open them.

Two separate issues have converged in the 1990s to promote the growing commitment to the freedom of information in archives and a reassess- ment of referencc scrvices to support this goal. One is the sense that the free public library tradition needs to be applied to the increasingly important electronic documentation on the Internet and elsewhere. The other is a growing sense of the shared ownership of cultural property. Both entail ethical traps which are not entirely new, just more treacherous than former ones.

CULTURAL PROPERTY IN THE ARCHIVES AND THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF OWNERSHIP

The late, legendary Frances Steloff of the Gotham Book Mart was known to startle customers by telling them that the used book they just bought was not really theirs; they were just temporary custodians. For unique items, more so than books published in thousands of copies, the implications of custodianship include providing access to the public, given its share of ownership in a joint cultural heritagc.

A personal story highlights some of the obligations and frustrations this viewpoint entails. In eighteen years of involvement with referencc work in a major archival repository, my work has been shadowed by someone I never met named Thomas K. Finletter. Early in my career I received a phone call asking if the archives had anything by or about Finletter. I checked the usual headings in the card catalog, leafed through some finding aids and confidently said "no." About once every two months ever since, while searching for other things, I have repeatedly stumbled upon intriguing letters by Thomas K. Finletter, who as it turns out was a prolific

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correspondent and a man of substance. Unlike the Volkogonov-Hiss case, none of these documents were in restricted collections, none involved legal evidence. These letters and references scattered in unlikely places form a type of cultural property. Owning them involves a tacit commitment to make them available, and to the extent possible to bring scattered fragments, such as the Finletter correspondence, together in a meaningful way.

A deed of gift may make it clear in a narrow legalistic sensc just who owns the papers once they are placed in a repository. The act of placing them there implies a commitment that they will be held in trust. A trust, of course, is a property interest held by one person for the benefit of another. Increasingly, nation states are exerting a claim of a higher level of ownership of cultural property and regulate the sale and export of antiquities and historic manuscripts. These levels of ownership may not be consistently codified in law, but the implications are already in place. As the owner of fragments of American heritage, the archives administration has a responsibility to preserve this material for use and to preserve it in a usable form. They need to be administered in a way that makes them accessible to a constituency of readers. The readcrs, in turn, ofien feel a strong sense of ownership of the intellectual content of significant documents in their field.

In between the archives administration with its duly signed deeds of gift, and the readers with their moral claim on the archivcs, stands the reference archivist. Some theoretical works on archives reference provide a model that resembles a restaurant waiter. Technical services cooks up the dishes and the waiters bring thcm to the customers at the table. The illusion of a ncutral, value-free delivery service can be comforting with its lack of responsibility and lack of any liability. The reference archivist is only rcquired to make a good faith effort to locate materials, results are not guaranteed. While there is no legal liability when the plate is empty, the reputation of the archives among its constituency depends on positive results. Whatever the theory, this reality places the reference archivist on the front lines of the organization.

Mediation is an inevitable part of the job. The boundaries of the job are constantly shifting. Locating scattered documentation, such as the Thomas K. Finletter materials, for a reader could well involve interpretation, translation, analysis-all the types of work associated with the researcher. The line between professional rcfcrcnce service and actual research should be fuzzy. In many places this concept has long been recognized, and archival work is considcred the domain of highly qualified historians. A

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sense of shared owncrship of history, beyond that involved with "work for hire," is the hallmark of reference archivists.

CUTTING AND PASTING HISTORY ON THE INTERNET

An ethical commitment to the frce flow of information entails a new set of obligations with the avalanche of electronic information. Just letting people in the door of the archives reading room is not enough. "Archivists establish intellectual control over their holdings by describing them in finding aids and guides to facilitate internal controls and access by users of the archives," according to the SAA Code of Ethics. Does the archivist do a search for the researcher on the in-house OPAC, tcach him how to do his own searches, or look on the Internet for Thomas K. Finletter letters all over the world? No standard level of service has been established as yet.

In the early 1980s, electronic access was an issue for technical services. Slowly over the years more and more archives placed their collection level descriptions on the AMC file of the Research and Libraries Information Network (RLIN). The shared database was not even engineered for use by readers. A generous archivist might occasionally think to print out a search for a researcher, but it was essentially an in-house technical services tool. Eventually thc database was loaded onto on-line public access computers, so that users could search for both books and documents on specific topics without mediation by the reference archivist. The reference archivist's role evolved into a teaching function, explaining how to use the on-line search tools. The transition from a purely technical services tool to a reference tool has not been smooth. Even now, many OPAC systems combinc the headers for both books and archival collections creating such impossible categories as the imprint of an unpublished document collection.

In order to promote access, finding aids are being loaded onto World Wide Web sites in increasing numbers. The danger of creating a greater demand than one can meet is very real. Reference service by e-mail became an established feature of most modern archives in the 1990s without any clear advance thinking on the implications. Many archives' home pages come equipped with reference question boxes that instantly transmit reference questions to an e-mail address at the repository. As researchers become used to this feature, the use of long distance, instantaneous reference questions will surely accelerate. One principle of the SAA code of ethics is that collections will be placed in those repositories "where they will be adequately processed and effectively utilized." In other words, a repository must be realistic about its funding and should only accept collections that it can afford to make accessible to users. The code is very

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clear on this point. If thc archives cannot afford reference service to assist researchers with a collection, that collection is supposed to be placed in a more appropriate, i.e., better kndcd, rcpository. A hasty commitment to standardizing these higher levels of electronic reference service could ultimately price small repositories out of the business, at least if they want to comply with prevailing standards.

Providing a home page for your repository, loading finding aids and facsimile documents onto it, leads inevitably to questions of public relations. A shabby home pagc reflects poorly on an institution, so there is intense competition to add color, images, sound, and video. Ten years ago a reference archivist could be counted on to create an attractive brochure once every ten years and oversee the photocopying of registers for researchers. Maintaining an archives home page or Web site is much more time consuming and requires substantial technical and esthetic skill. It is a matter of time as much as money. The pressure to include a visible electronic profile on thc Internet is already apparent. Given the typical limited staffing, the more time that is devoted to electronic reference help, the less the time is available for in-pcrson reference assistance.

In one of the typical ironies of the Internet, as more information becomes available, specific facts become more difficult to locate. This trcnd speaks to the very raison d'btre of library and archives work, to bring order to proliferating informational chaos. Just as technical serviccs archivists made the remarkable transition from typing catalog cards and registers to entering descriptions into databases, reference archivists are accepting the new challenges and scanning photographs and documents onto compact disks and into Web sites. There is a strong drivc to bcgin structuring the Internet resources for better accessibility and providing subject area Inter- net addrcsscs to save researchers' time. Some good work has been done in creating subject related Web sites for scholars and for students. Quality control and accuracy remain pressing problems as documentary material is rapidly scanned and loaded onto the Internet. A verbatim document facsimile has all the appearance of truth, but without a context, cven an authentic document or photograph can be very misleading. The branching, linked structure of the Internet creates a different approach to data than thc linear order of a book, manuscript, or record group. One of the sacrcd principles of archives has been to preserve the position of a document within a hierarchy, often dictated by the organizational structures that created the papers originally. Internet facsimiles lose this context. The browser is forced to assume that a document is both representative and not manipulated. As a rcsult, disjointed snippets of information are often misleading. The selection process at present gives preference to colorful

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Elena S. Danielson 11 7

documents with visual appeal on a screen. In their eagerness to participate in the Internet revolution, and to make their collections acccssiblc, reference archivists must guard against inadvertently contributing to a distorted history.

The other troubling consequence of Internet history is that thc glamour of the medium frequently conflicts with the tragedy of the message. One very well done Web site on the history of World War I1 has excellent graphics and rapid links to other sites on specific aspects of the war. With a click, the browser can shift from the museum in Nanking that documents Japanese wartime atrocities to a museum in Hiroshima that preserves thc devastating history of that city. With another click, the tragedy of the Jews in the Holocaust comes into view, and another link brings you concentra- tion camp songs in full stereo with color facsimiles of hand-decorated music sheets. The dignity of the victims can casily be compromised in the name of education. Reference archivists supply these documents and images. Are they responsible for this use? Traditionally archivists in dcm- ocratic countries have tried to maintain a certain objectivity and distance from the interpretation and presentation of their holdings. In theory researchers should be free to interpret and present the documentation as they choose. Be that as it may, no archivist likes to see materials he or she provided to a researcher be transmitted in a way that exploits suffcring for entertainment value. While prior censorship invites criticism, misused documentation also reflects poorly on the archives. Telling a scholar what to publish and not publish simply does not work. A strong research partnership between scholar and reference archivist with mutual respect is an effective way of indirectly influcncing the tonc of documcntaries from thc archives. How such influence fits into the rolc of thc supposedly neutral archivist is a difficult question. This research partnership is an area that requires good judgment as well as good interpersonal skills, and while it involves ethical issucs, no code can adequately address it.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARCHIVES V.T. INFORMATION FROM THE ARCHIVES

Once the research aspect of reference work is established and recognized, another boundary starts to break down. As mentioned above, an established principle of archival reference has been the distinction between providing information about the materials and delivering information from them. The first is typically viewed as essential. Catalog cards in the reading room file drawer, or a record in the on-line public access catalog, used to be enough to validate the good intentions of the archivists.

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How many copy machines and printers have been worn out providing collection level descriptions and registcrs by mail to researchers?

Beyond collection and item lcvel descriptions, which lead the reader to the information they need, thcrc is a hcavy dcmand for the actual information itself. At this boundary there is a difference in tradition between public libraries and historical archives. Delivering the answer to a reference question has long been a cherished ideal in public libraries. Factual information is delivered primarily in person but also by telephone, fax or mail, limited only by the time and imagination of the staff on duty. This works best when the questions are basically objcctive, "cut and dried." The more subjective or extensive requests are met by varying degrees of competence and guidance to sources. There is a cherished assumption in archives that work with original sources is in this more subjective and extensivc category, and researchers are helped to get started and then work independently, pouring over files for weeks or months.

There are of course many exccptions to this assumption. The Presiden- tial Libraries in the National Archives system, for instancc, arc famous for graciously helping inexperienced scholars such as high school students find information on the American presidents. When the question is very straightforward, few archivists would refuse to simply provide the facts from their sourccs, especially if the answer is readily available. The principle remains, however, that extracting data from the archives and packaging it for the public has not been considered a major function in archives reference, but has been seen as thc responsibility of the researcher. It neatly circumvents the Finletter problem by shifting the responsibility to the researcher.

Current circumstances have placed pressure on archivists to rccvalu- ate this principle. The push for direct access to data is strongest from journalists and documentary filmmakers, who do not have the leisure to marinate in the documentation for long periods of time to soak up what they necd. Often it is the audio-visual department that feels the pressure most urgently as the media work under tight deadlines. As the public bccolncs used to Learning history from images and sounds on screcns rather than text on paper, the need for photos and film footage has risen dramatically. When filmmakers call, they ask for the actual images of a particular event, not which collections might conlain the information on the subject. There are several assumptions implicit in these demands that require careful consideration before a coherent audio-visual reference policy can be implemented.

When rcscarchers, especially media journalists, claim access rights to direct information or imagcs from thc archives, not just the right to see and

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evaluate documentation in the reading room or audio-visual room, they are asserting a new level of ownership of the cultural properties in archives. With troubling frequency, journalists decide in advance what document they necd and then ask for it without knowing whether it exists. Thcy may know who won a particular battle, and ask for a photo that can convey this victory visually over the TV screen. Amazingly, starting with World War I1 reporting, the U.S. Signal Corps was able to producc thousands of crisp photographs that convey a visual story that "reads," i.e., carries a clear mcssage. Unequivocal images are necessarily the most misleading, and it is very difficult to find photographs of dead American GIs in these photos to reflect the high casualties. With the Vietnam War, extensive film footage became available, often with a similar clear messagc favoring one side or the other. Now there is an cnormous demand for photos and films of World War I with the same clarity and story telling vision, even though the technology was not capable of it at the time. (This demand is not entirely new, as collectors of Civil War postcards know. The same limited number of battlefield photographs were recycled for any number of battles with freely attributed captions.)

Reference archivists have traditionally worked from the assumption that you rcad the documents and examine the photographs first, then determine the facts. Increasingly the archives are expected to illustrate or demonstrate already known facts. This now crosses over into the area of instruction on using archives, which is a noble goal fraught with serious logical traps. It puts the reference archivist into the position of literally packaging history for popular consumption. There is sometimes a natural reluctance to enter into the area of interpretation and publication of facsimiles because of the neccssary simplification in the process. For those reference archivists willing to enter the field of instruction, the payoff can be very gratifying. The National Archives has produced such packages of annotated documentary facsimiles for schools with great success.

Demonstrating confirmed facts is less of a problem than the requests for single documcnts that prove or disprove a disputed fact, the request for a "smoking gun." In the Volkogonov-Alger Hiss case dcscribed above, the press had a strong incentive to come to some sort of conclusion, rather than explain the ambiguities of a complex historical situation. It seemed beyond the comprehension of the press that one could not consult the archives the same way one would consult an encyclopedia. No rcfercncc archivist wants to bc placed in this sort of a situation, but it is a difficult quandary. No matter how well intentioned, an archivist's suggestion that journalists conduct a search on their own inevitably results in a very negative itnprcssion of the archives. The issue of fairness aside, antagoniz-

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ing the press is simply not desirable or advisable. Archivists are under pressure to produce something. One pragmatic strategy when faced with such requests is to provide a flood of copies of relevant documentation, preferably demonstrating all sides of an issue, so that the complexities are more readily apparent. One can increase the public knowledge on a topic without necessarily drawing a conclusion.

Responding to requests for information from rather than about the archives involves extensive search time and considerable staff effort. Pro- visions can be made for the unusually long search requests. (There can be lists of local research assistants for hire by the hour for instance.) In the long run, treating cultural property as a shared heritage creates a reservoir of good will that no public relations campaign could match. The same issues of packaging information from the archives for instruction and for the media apply to the on-line forms of archival data delivery via the Internet. One simply needs a very realistic awareness of the pitfalls this helpfulness entails, especially when dealing with lcss experienced scholars such as students, journalists, documentary filmmakers, and webmasters.

THE PRIVACY CONUNDRUM

The ethical issue that will not go away is the privacy rights of third parties, who often do not even know their correspondent has placed their private letters in a public repository to bc rcad by researchers, or worse, placed on the Web in a scanned-in documentary. Despite extensive ex- amination in the professional literature, the privacy conundrum is not close to being resolved. Heather MacNeil's impassioned defense of privacy rights, Without Consent, logically lays out the legal and ethical argu- ments in favor of limiting access to personal information in government archives and even destroying such records of private lives. Writing from her experience with Canadian archives, she contends that for social services case files, a restriction of 150 years from the birth of the individual, as codified in French law, is appropriate. Very few American archivists would agree with such a lengthy restriction, and it would be very difficult to administer without generating complaints of obstruction. In Europe an 80-year restriction on personal information is not unusual. The venerable Bodleian Library, at Oxford University, has a frustratingly consistent policy not to open the papers of any living individual, even with his express permission. Even in Britain this has generated a lot of negative press for the library.

Heathcr MacNeil goes so far as to question the advisability of collcct- ing so much personal data in the first place: "Archivists, along with

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Elena S. Dunielsor~ I21

records managers, should be at the forefront of those dcbates, questioning the technological and bureaucratic im~eratives that reauire the collection ., and maintenance of so much personal information and challenging the assumption that, because the technological capacity to collect, store, and disscminate enormous amounts of personal information exists, it therefore ought to be exploited."1°

Privacy concerns are probably most justified in the management of medical, legal and psychiatric case files. The doctor-patient relationship and the lawyer-client relationship have long been viewed as sacred. Re- view boards have become an orderly solution to access to such files in well-funded and wcll-staffed archives. While it violates the principle of equal access, it falls under the category of equitable access since each researcher can expect to have his project given a sympathetic review. The success of review boards as gatekeepers depends entirely on their integrity and impartiality. When a medical or legal repository cannot support a review board, it is often recommended to keep the records closed.

When Diane Middlebrook published a biography of poet Anne Sexton, she used confidential psychiatric interviews that traditionally have been considered private and privileged.'' The poet's psychiatrist made thc detcr- mination to release the infomation in this particular case, not a review board. The poet's family was divided on whether the revelations were ethical or a violation of family privacy. The medical profession was also appalled at the breach of the doctor-patient privilege. Yet since the subject had died, and the basic rule is that the dead do not have privacy rights, the general consensus came out in favor of Middlebrook's use of medical case file sources. However, many of the people which Sexton discussed in these private therapeutic sessions are still alive. It helps that the book was written with great insight and skill. Tabloids reveal such private information on a regular basis, without such skill and regard for truth. Lawsuits provide only partial remedy to these abuses of privacy since the profit motive reduces the interaction to a cost-benefit analysis. If scandal raises sales sufficiently, a lawsuit is just the cost of doing business.

The Germans grappled with the issue of case files when the country was reunified and the files of the former East German secret police, the notorious Stasi (Ministerium h e r Staatssicherheit), came into the custody of a democratic society. The West Gcrman archivists wanted the files restricted in accordance with regular Bundesarchiv rules for personnel records. In May 1990, just prior to unification, East Germany's first freely elected government adopted a resolution to restrict for 110 years all Stasi files that refer to particular individuals. A former East German dissident, Joachirn Gauck, was able to push through special legislation in 1991 to

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122 REFERENCE SERVlCES FOR ARCHIVES AND MANUSCRIPTS

permit victims of the Stasi to see their own files. Others were excluded. This unequal access was justified as a special exception required by a special historical context. The role of the press during this process was a mixed democratic blessing, as the identity of informers was revealed by former victims who had special access to their own records. As in all such raw intelligence files, the accuracy of the recorded information varies from validated facts to recordcd gossip and deliberate misrepresentation. The victims' own interpretations were likewise variable, combining great insight with wild guesses as to the correct identity of code names. As information leaked from the files to the press, reputations were rapidly ruined for activities that had been officially legal, though immoral, when they were cornmitted.12

Any strictly legalistic, consistent analysis would bar such violations of privacy as the Middlebrook biography and the revelations from the Stasi files. In practice, public life is probably better for knowing this inside infortnation, both Middlebrook's insight into the personal life of a troubled poet, and the Germans' insight into a troubled society. Revealing these private case files serves the greater good, just as the courts ruled in favor of opening the so-called "cigarette papers" discussed above."

CONCL USZON

Formal ethical standards pcrform a number of useful services. First of all, they provide a benchmark for what can be reasonably expected of professionals in managing cultural treasures and government records. They also attempt to balance the competing demands of donors, researchers, private individuals, the public, and the press. Part of this is accom- plished simply by systematically recognizing the different interests of the parties involved. Rcfcrence ethics are the result of discussions among experienced professionals, and thus distill the collective experience of managing a cultural heritage. In the process they remind harried practitio- ners of the inherent value of this often underpaid work. There are dcfinite- ly troubling aspects to serving as gatekeepers of a public trust. The conse- quences of a refcrence letter can be far-reaching. Because of the nature of the profession, the ethics of refcrence services also open a window on some very profound issues in public life. Unlike morals, ethics evolve and change with society. The discussions behind codes of ethics are perhaps more important than the guidelines themselves. They deserve a hearing that goes beyond arcane professional organizations because they help definc our relationship to the past and our visions of individual frcedoms and privacy.

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Elena S. Danielson

REFERENCES

I. Margolick, David, "After 40 Years, a Postscript on Hiss: Russian Official Calls Him Innocent," New York Times, October 29, 1992, p. 814. The November 1992 conversation took place at Rosarkhiv in Moscow, with the author present. The retraction was reported in an article by Sergc Schmcmann, "Russian General Rctrcats on Hiss," New York Zn~es, December 17, 1992, p. A 17.

2. For a discussion of equal access, see Elena S. Danielson, "The Ethics of Access," The American Archivist, vol. 52, Winter 1989, pp. 52-62.

3. Final Report of the Joint AHA-OAH Ad Hoc Committee lo investigate the Charges Againsl the Fmnklin D. Roosevelt Libraty and Related Matters. Wash- ington: American Historical Association, 1970.

4. Code of Ethics for Archivists and Conmenfaty, (Chicago: Society of Ameri- can Archivists, 1992). This statement is available at a nominal price as a brochure from the Society of American Archivists, 600 South Federal, Suite 504, Chicago, lllinois 60605. Both the code and the ALA-SAA Joint Statement on Access can be found on the SAA Web site, http://volvo.gslis.utexas.edu~-us-saa/infosaa.html. An early version can be found in "The Archivist's Code," The American Archi- vist, 18, 1955, pp. 307-308. For a critique of codc based and case study based cth- ics, see Gregory E. Koster, "Ethics in Reference Service: Codes, Case Studies or Values," Reference Services Review. Vol. 20, No. I, 1990.

5. Pugh, Mary Jo, Providing Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts, (Chicago: The Society of American Archivists, 1992), p. 3. Here she is reiterating long-standing platitudes in the archival literature. For a succinct summary of the basic issues, see Nancy Lankford, "Ethics and the Rcfcrcncc Archivist," The Midwestem Archivist, Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1983. A worthwhile book (though duc for an update) on the legal ramifications of archival work can be found in Archives & Manuscripts: Law by Gary M. Peterson and Trudy Huskamp Peterson, (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1985).

6. "Standards for Ethical Conduct for Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Librarians, with Guidelines for Institutional Practicc in Support of the Standards," College & Research Libraries News, 54 (April 1993), pp. 207-2 15. Also available as a separate brochure.

7. The text as approved by ALA Council, June 28, 1995 is available on the ALA Web site, at htttp://www.ala.org. Another useful document on the ALA Web site is the Library Bill of Rights.

8. Pugh, op. cit., p. 5. 9. Glantz, Stanton et al., The Cigarelre Papers, Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1996. This volume contains 539 pages. The Web site has 8,000 pages of actual documents from the set of papers and can be accessed at http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco.

10. MacNeil, Heather, Without Consent: The Ethics of Disclosing Personal hl- formation in Public Archives, (Metuchen. NJ and London: The Society of Ameri- can Archivists and The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1992), p. 199.

I I. Middlebrook, Diane, Anne Sarott. (New York: Random House, 1991).

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12. The literature on the Stasi is already vast. A basic text is David Gill and Ulrich Schroctcr, Das Minislerium fuer Siaatssicherheil: Analomie des Mielke- It~rperiurrrs, (Hamburg: Rohwolt, 1991). A handbook that explains how to gain access to one's own records can be found in Tina Krone, lrena Kukutz, and Henry Leide, Wew Wir &sere Akten Lesen: Har~dbuch Zuni Unigarig mil deli STASI-Ak- fen. (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1992). A useful summary of the issues was made by Kjell Engelbrekt, "Thc Stasi Revisited," RFE/RL Research Reporf, Vol. 2., Nr. 46, November 19.1993.

13. Sara S. Hodson provides a balanced view of the issues on both sides in "Pri- vate Lives: Confidentiality in Manuscript Collections," Rare Books and Manu- script Librarianship, 6 (1991). pp. 108-1 18. Mark A. Greene explains the discrep- ancy bctween privacy law and archival practice in "Moderation in Everything, Access in Nothing?: Opinions About Access Restrictions on Private Papers," Ar- chival Issues, Vol. 18, No. I , 1993.

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Documents

Ethics and Reference Services