I not saying that some or maybe just a little of what Leslie Charles Waffen did was not pure theft of unique national treasures, but the rest does not phase me. Archives themselves daily destroy duplicate(and sometimes unique if deemed similar) materials of historic value of all types, audio, film , video, paper, photos, etc. Sometimes items can be sold if deed of gift allows and is a generally commercial item such as a magazine or book or commercial CD. I have seen glass slides hammered broken to clear out a donated collection, bins full of duplicate items 50-200 years old going to secure landfill, and even being asked to destroy audio recordings of episodes or versions of recordings after only a few examples are to be saved, or asked to destroy all of a 50 year old collection of recordings if determined that the recordings are available somewhere else, which assumes the other archive has a copy as good, has policies as good, distribution as good, storage as good,, etc. Most paper is destroyed or recycle after being scanned or archival photocopied. I know a lot of this is driven by perceived relevancy and storage costs, but there should be a channel between preservation and destruction.
So if he saved any of these materials from the dumpster(not destine there by his own decision), that is fine with me. If he took items that were unique, then I have problems with that. And if the was a case of a duplicate of an item that is still in the collection and being preserved on other formats correctly, then the institution itself should be doing the selling and making the money for the institution.
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