> From: Encoded Archival Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joyce Chapman
> ...my personal belief is that we have already answered questions relating to our professional
> commitment to protecting third-party privacy. By deciding to have unrestricted access to
> such materials in our reading rooms, we should have already dealt with the weight and ethics
> of third party privacy issues. If we feel a new discomfort with the dawn of digital access,
> this should cause us to reexamine the decisions we have made previously, and to examine
> the roots of our discomfort...
>
> ...I think we need to ask ourselves whether what we were really thinking before digital access
> was, "we are comfortable with everyone who fits a certain profile looking at these materials."
> If that is the case, then clearly that mentality is what needs to be reexamined, and our
> processing/restriction/decision-making matrix needs to be updated according to the reality
> that our materials are truly open...
Elegantly stated. Perhaps we've been doing a kind of unintentional classification, subconsciously placing people willing to expend the time and effort to come on-site to do research into a different category from The Teeming Masses? Interesting thought...
Michele
(be green - don't print this email!)
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Michele Combs
Manuscripts Librarian
Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University Libraries
222 Waverly Ave.
Syracuse, NY 13244
315-443-2081
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