Ethics Preserving

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Published in:Argiefnuus/Archives News 43/4 (June 2001) [Festschrift Verne Harris] pp. 70-

77.

Eric Ketelaar

The Ethics of Preserving and Destroying Private Archives

As gatekeepers of information, information professionalshave a greater ethical responsibility than ever before

to their users, to themselves, to the profession,

and to society.1

The second edition of Verne HarrisExploring Archives contains a number of extensively

revised chapters.2 One of these is chapter 11 on archival ethics. Archival ethics also figured

prominently in Archives of the People, by the People, for the People, the keynote speech Imade at the symposium Archives and Users in Changing Society during my visit to South

Africa in August 1992.3 This was also the first time Verne and I worked together. We dont

only share a deeply felt concern about archival ethics, but we both also believe strongly inthe necessity of an ongoing debate on ethical issues. Only by discussing the moral issues, on

the basis of events in reality or by testing hypothetical scenarios, the archivist can arm

himself or herself for the difficult choices he or she may have to make.4 This is exactly what

chapter 11 ofExploring Archives is about.

As a point of departure for his discussion of archival ethics Verne takes the novel The

Archivistby Martha Cooley and some of the arguments concerning this novel that I

developed in my inaugural address at the University of Amsterdam in 1998.5 In my address

I stated that I considered Matt Lane, the archivist in the novel, to be guilty of a serious

offence against the professional code of archivists.6 By burning the letters written by T.S.

Eliot to his friend Emily Hale, Lane decided to give precedence to the dead over the living, to

favour the wish for secrecy expressed by Eliot over the wishes of Emily Hale (who donatedthe letters to the archivists collection) or the interests of posterity. Lane muses:

An archivist serves the readers desire. Yet what of the writers is it of no

consequence? Eliots letters to Emily were not his bequest. We were never meant

to read them: only she was, and she relinquished them. Poetry was what he left us.

It was all that mattered. The rest is not our business.7

The aspect I criticised was that of the archivist as a censor who decides that the memory of

Eliot should be kept through his poetry, not through these letters. I censured the archivist

who was guided by changes in his personal life to take a decision he was not entitled to

take, neither legally nor morally.

Verne, too, questions the archivist Lane playing memory god. In destroying the letters is heprotecting Eliots rights, serving the writers desire, or merely playing god? Is he obeying his

conscience, or is he in a symbolic act, literalising his struggle with the memory of anotherwriter his wife?8 But, contrary to my opinion, Verne suggests that the fictional archivists

decision may have been justifiable, not right.

Verne and I both agree that the way in which Lane reached his decision to destroy the

letters cannot be justified. It is essential for any archivist when forced to take a stand in an

ethical issue, when resolving conflicting rights and interests, to follow an accountable


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procedure, to have, as Verne puts it, the howright. That includes testing ones views and

feelings with respected colleagues and friends. Without such a test we abandon

accountability, and risk assuming godlike powers, Verne writes.

The procedural guidelines proposed by Verne are not a recipe, or a blueprint for resolving

competing rights and interests. Neither will these help a whistleblower, like Verne. Such

procedural guidelines (or the sound advice to whistleblowers given by Sissela Bok9

) concernthe howand not the whator whyof choosing in an ethical dilemma. In Archives of the

People, by the People, for the People I advocated using a test, based on criteria proposedby the American Herbert Kelman and introduced into the archival discourse by Heather

Macneil.10 It is a test to assess whether research using personal information, is concurrent

with human dignity. I believe that the test may also be applied in cases where a difficult

choice has to be made between many competing moral obligations, individual and societal

rights and expectations.

The first and fundamental premise, Sissela Bok writes, is that of individual autonomy over

personal information. It asks that we respect individuals as capable of having secrets.11Kelman considers violating peoples autonomy as inconsistent with respect for their dignity.

He understands human dignity in the Kantian sense: man has to be treated as an end, never

merely as a means towards some extraneous ends. According to Kelman any invasion ofpeoples privacy or any breach of a promise of confidentiality is inconsistent with respect

for their dignity and therefore a presumptive, orprima facie cause of harm.12 The test

consists of three questions: (i) To what risk is human dignity violated by the decision? (ii) Is

there a competing moral imperative requiring such violation? (iii) Is that moral imperative

justified by any tangible or compelling social benefit, primarily to the records subjects,

secondarily to third parties and thirdly to society as a whole?

Archivists fear the smell of burnt letters,13 but in most cases their fear is caused by heirs

and executors who want to destroy papers in an attempt to engineering of history. 14 The

latter term is used by Joseph Sax whose recent book Playing Darts with a Rembrandt. Public

and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures describes a number of cases on access restrictions

concerning private archives. However, Sax does not deal with the implications of a decisionby the creator of an archive to destroy his or her papers and the subsequent refusal by theheirs to execute this decision because they want to preserve (and make use of) the papers.

Let me try to answer the three questions of the Kelman-test.

(i) As Henry James wrote A man has certainly a right to determine what the world shall

know of him and what it shall not; the worlds natural curiosity to the contrary

notwithstanding.15 I would argue that the decision to preserve the papers against the

creators explicit will, to serve as one more source of knowledge regarding the creators life

or for any other reason, would entail using the archives creator as a means, not as an end.

(ii) This would only be outweighed if there would be a moral imperative to refuse executing

his or her will. This would clearly be the case if preservation of the papers were necessary to

prevent harm is done to innocent persons.16 There is also Beccarias and Benthams

imperative to do the greatest good for the greatest number17. Preservation of the archives of a public figure may fall into this category.

(iii) Depending on the nature of the papers, society at large would certainly benefit fromtheir preservation, whereas the interests of the records subjects and third parties could be

protected by, for example, temporarily restricting access.

Application of the test would then result in a refusal of the request to destroy the papers,

either for the whole archive or for a part. The same test can also be applied in the opposite

case: destruction of papers by over-protective heirs, against the will of the creator, either


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because they believe that their creator would have wanted this, or even worse because

the heirs might be embarrassed by preservation of the papers and access to them. 18

So far the questions of the Kelman-test were used in the case of heirs and executors. What

is the position of an archivist when papers are donated to an archival institution? The

archivist may learn, either when the archives are acquired, or at a later stage, that the

creator of the archive had wanted their destruction. Did the heirs apply the Kelman-test andwas the outcome positive? If not, then their unethical behaviour may implicate the archivist

who accepts the papers. The International Council on Archives Code of Ethics warnsArchivists should be aware that acquiring documents of dubious origin, however interesting,

could encourage an illegal commerce." 19 Likewise, by accepting archives which were meant

to be destroyed, the archivist condones the breaking of a promise. As Heather Macneil

compellingly asks, Would we choose to live in a world in which individuals were routinely

permitted to break promises if doing so would produce knowledge they thought was worth

having?20

I would suggest that the archivist ensures that the Kelman-test is applied, either by theheirs or by the archivist, in consultation with colleagues. I propose also that every archival

institution develops a protocol for this procedure, including the requirement to document the

test properly. If, after all, the final answer to the threefold ethical question is negative, thenthe wish of the creator of the archives has to be met by destroying the papers. Not, as the

archivist Lane did, in secrecy and in the middle of the night, and not because some

individual archivist thinks better, but as the outcome of a thorough and difficult ethical

reasoning for which the archivist and the peers he or she involves in the decision making,

are fully responsible and accountable.

1 Wallace C. Koehler and J. Michael Pemberton, A Search for Core Values. Towards a ModelCode of Ethics for Information Professionals,Journal of Information Ethics 9 (2000) 37.

2 Verne Harris, Exploring Archives: an Introduction to Archival Ideas and Practice

in South Africa, second edition (National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria 2000).

3 Eric Ketelaar, Archives of the people, by the people, for the people, in: S.A. Argiefblad /

S.A. Archives Journal34 (1992) 5-16, reprinted in: Eric Ketelaar, The Archival Image.

Collected essays (Verloren, Hilversum 1997) 15-26.

4 Frederick C.J. Ketelaar, Quis custodiet custodientes ?, Nederlands Archievenblad88

(1984) 89-91; idem, De archivaris en de levenden, Nederlands Archievenblad89 (1985)119-121; idem, Qui desiderat pacem, Nederlands Archievenblad90 (1986) 97-102.

5 Martha Cooley, The Archivist. A novel(Abacus, London 1998); Frederick C.J. Ketelaar,

Archivalisering en archivering. Rede uitgesproken bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van

hoogleraar in de archiefwetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op vrijdag 23

oktober 1998 (Samsom, Alphen aan den Rijn 1998). Part of that address (but not the

discussion of Cooleys The Archivist) was later published in English: Eric Ketelaar,


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Archivalization and Archiving,Archives and manuscripts. The Journal of the Australian

Society of Archivists 27 (1999) 54-61.

6 The following summary did not figure in the English summary of the address which was

used by Verne Harris. See Harris, Exploring Archives, 69.

7 Cooley, The Archivist, 322-323, as quoted by Harris, Exploring Archives, 91.

8 Harris, Exploring Archives, 71.

9 Sissela Bok, Secrets. On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (Vintage Books, New

York 1989) 210-229.

10 Heather Macneil, Defining the limits of freedom of inquiry: the ethics of disclosing

personal information held in government archives,Archivaria 32 (Summer 1991) 140;

Heather Macneil, Without Consent. The Ethics of Disclosing Personal Information in PublicArchives (Society of American Archivists and Scarecrow Press, Metuchen and London 1992)

164-172.

11 Bok, Secrets, 120.

12 Macneil, Without Consent, 166, 171.

13Mary Sarah Bilder, The Shrinking Back: The Law of Biography,Stanford Law Review43

(1991) 299, 331 n. 176, quoted by Joseph L. Sax, Playing Darts with a Rembrandt. Public

and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures (The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1999(hardcover), 2001 (paperback)) 119.

14Sax, Playing Darts, 108.

15

As quoted by James biographer Leon Edel, Literary Biography(Anchor Books, Garden City1959) 37.

16 Bok, Secrets, 121, adds or turn someone into an unwitting accompliced in crime.

17 Originally: the greatest happiness of the greatest number. See Richard Bellamy (ed.),

Beccaria, On Crime and Punishments and Other Writings (Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge 1995) 141; Ross Harssison, Bentham (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London,

Boston, Melbourne and Henley 1983) 167-194.

18 Sax, Playing Darts, 134-142.

19 Available on www.ica.org

20 Macneil, Without Consent, 171.

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Ethics Preserving