Responsibility Belongs Not Just to the Individual

I have been sitting on this blog post a long time.

I grew up in a small community of conservative citizens who took responsibility personally. Not just personal responsibility (no pun intended here), but also professional responsibility. Doctors still made house calls to infirm patients, lawyers still did pro bono work with no complaints, pharmacists dispensed medication at discounts that the poor could afford, teachers still tutored at-risk students after school for no extra pay. I grew up thinking that whatever profession I was going to be in (at the time it was the Bar) that I would take my responsibility as a professional to heart and give back.

Giving back is one of the marks of a profession. Every profession needs a set of particular skills, a code of ethics, and standards of practice. But the fourth necessity is giving back. Realizing this myself, I have tried in the past to give here some thoughts about the responsibility of archivists toward the outside, the "others" in our communities.

I see a lot of giving back, too. From the archivist who goes out and gives community presentations like how to do basic conservation on books to the archivist who works hard to get public legislation like PAHR passed to help preserve our nation's historical identity. As individual archivists, we give a lot, and I know that if we totalled all those hours we spend helping others do "archival" things, outside of the archives, then we'd probably rack up millions of person-hours a year in volunteering our expertise to the community. But there is another aspect of professionalism that is neglected by archivists, I'm sorry to say.

Archival professional organizations should advocate not just in regards to legislation (like PAHR), but also in helping citizens gain access to the records of citizens. You may have guessed that this post is really about the Presidential Libraries and their lack of taking responsibility to help out persons like Anthony Clark. But it really is not about that - it is about SAA and other national archival organizations putting their money and person-power where their mouths are. And, yes, I count myself among the "their" and "they" when I speak.

The Society of American Archivists is a professional organization and has a responsibility, I believe, to go out and work for better records standards and policies in the United States. When someone is having problems with an archives or archivist, be it NARA or someone else, then SAA should step up and work toward a resolution.

In the past, I have used this blog to call the SAA leadership to task, telling them that we have a duty to go out and advocate for Anthony Clark and other researchers having a hard time with NARA. But I may have misspoken or used the wrong word. Maybe "duty" is too strong, or it is something that appeals only to a subset of archivists who feel a certain way and the SAA leadership does not feel that way or are not a part of that subset of archivists.

So I am going to re-frame my plea here. It is the responsibility of every citizen archivist to go out and give back to the community, as I have said most (if not more than most) of us already do. But it is also the responsibility of SAA, as a collective of individual archivists, to go out and advocate for records legislation and records policies that reflect the growing and evolving state of records access in the United States.

I am not asking SAA to become involved in only the Anthony Clark matter. But why can't SAA act as a mediator in disputes between researchers and archives, especially in cases where a gross negligence is alleged by the researcher? The AHA did it for a researcher at the Roosevelt library, so why can't SAA do it for Clark and others at the Presidential Libraries?

Why is it so hard to move this organization from a place of comfort and complacency, where education of members is so high class, to a place where we put our education to work for others? Why is it so hard to see that we not only have responsibilities as individual archivists, but also as a group of archivists?

I am going to paraphrase an old story I heard a long time ago, putting into the context of records access. It may be cliche, it may be trite, it may be obscene, but I think it is necessary:

A man walked up to me and told me they were denying Anthony Clark access to records. I said, "it's not me, so why should I care"? and moved on. Another man walked up to me later and told me they were denying access to records for anyone not a government employee. I said "I'm not one, so what do I care?" and moved on. Then I went to retrieve some records and was told I was not allowed access. No one was around for me to complain to - they had all been denied access, too.

We need to wake up and get moving and help NARA and Anthony Clark find a resolution, not just for Clark, but for all future researchers at the Presidential Libraries. Then . . . then we need to move ahead and help others who have similar problems elsewhere. Let's put our actions into play, our money where our mouths are. Who will join me?