Ethics in Archives: How Special Collections Protects Your Privacy

Ethics in Archives: How Special Collections Protects Your Privacy

Archives

This online journal is informing towards understanding ethics in archives. The journal goes into the importance and process that archivists go through to respecting data in already existing collections. Privacy plays a grand part in ethics especially since it is the focus of maintaining collections private information. Without this sort of etiquette in archives there would be accessed data that would not be protected which allows for threats to cross over and cause problems. Yet the journal goes into demonstrating that each institution has different interpretations of ethics in their collections. Jessica Serrao presents this information through this known process in special collections through her own experience. The process is a constant reminder of what it takes to maintain and protect security data in collections. It is explained thoroughly by explaining the importance of each document that is viewed as containing valuable information. It is important for documents to go through this process so they can be removed or kept in the collections. The journal also summarizes The Richardson Papers Case where a professor’s files contained valuable students’ private information that were at risk of exposure.
Privacy is a crucial topic that is constantly ignored in Ethics. Ethics does not limit the privacy of historical or present records, which should be concerning since it allows personal information in collections to be accessed.

Jessica L. Serrao

Online Journal

2017-07-07

Janet Jaimes

Serrao, Jessica L. “Ethics in Archives: How Special Collections Protects Your Privacy.” NC State University Libraries. North Carolina State University Libraries, July 27, 2017. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/special-collections/ethics-in-archives:-how-special-collections-protects-your-privacy.