Archival Ethics Getting Trashed, Continued

In the long discussion on the A&A list over the past few days that evolved into a debate about the identity of archivists (who we are, how we define ourselves, how we are defined), no one mentioned ethics or a code of ethics.

When one looks at the marks of a profession, what makes an occupation a profession, having a code of ethics is one of these. Okay, SAA has one, as do all the national archival organizations. But ours is unenforceable, or what SAA Council calls "aspirational," which just means that it sits there and gathers dust. Now there is a Council item for the meeting next week that asks Council to amend the charge of the Committee on Ethics and Professional Conduct by eliminating the 4th provision of that charge, which states:

"The committee recommends to the Council procedures for responding to complaints to SAA alleging violation of the Code of Ethics for Archivists and advises the Council on specific cases as deemed necessary by the President.The committee recommends to the Council procedures for responding to complaints to SAA alleging violation of the Code of Ethics for Archivists , and advises the Council on specific cases as deemed necessary by the President." (You can find the charge of the committee here).

So if there are complaints about someone violating the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, then who handles it? Well, that is another discussion item that Dr. Bruce Ambacher has put together for the Council. It is titled "Revocation of SAA Membership" and goes into great detail about the possibility of having a yet unnamed body to investigate claims and complaints against SAA members, such as the New York archivist who was convicted of stealing from the New York State Archives, and do something about revoking that person's membership.

I think it is a step in the right direction for us to put into place some way of getting rid of the bad apples in our profession, but I am not sure we need to reinvent the wheel in order to do so. Isn't that supposed to be the charge of an ethics committee?

If we as a profession, as we try to establish an identity for ourselves in our American culture, intend on enforcing ethics of some kind, don't we need an ethics code that is enforceable? After all, the New York archivist actually did nothing wrong in regard to our Code of Ethics for Archivists because it is IMPOSSIBLE to do anything wrong in regard to that Code, because it is unenforceable.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that SAA Council is trying to put the cart before the horse. We can't punish someone for doing something wrong until we have a list of wrongs that can be violated. And why try to put together yet another body of people that may or may not act on complaints against archivists when we already have one in place - the Committee on Ethics and Professional Conduct.

My advice, scrap the Committee on Ethics and Professional Conduct, take it off of the books until such time as we can show we have the aptitude to put into place rules for archivists to follow. Then we can reconstitute the committee (or one like it) in order to enforce the rules.

Right now we have a great group of people sitting on this committee and they do absolutely nothing throughout the year. Give them something to do or get rid of the committee.

Identity 1, Confusion 10 - Archives Journals News

Two weeks ago, I emailed Teresa Brinati, SAA publications staff person, and asked her when more issues of The American Archivist were going to be scanned and put online. I guess great minds run on the same track (as my mom always said), because the next day she emailed me and pointed me to an announcement on the SAA website that the journal would be online this Fall. A second announcement said that JSTOR would soon carry all the journal articles from The American Archivist.

Now, I'm a big fan of reading PDF files of articles on my computer. I get the journal in paper format, but I have not opened an issue since the nine most recent volumes went online for perusal by SAA members. In fact, I'm probably going to toss the paper copies very soon.

I also have PDF files of articles from some of the other nine print English language archives journals. I index Provenance, so I get PDFs of those before anyone sees the actual journal. The only one I do not have access to the PDF version is the Journal of Archival Organization, a newer journal that seems to be pretty technical and concentrates, from the looks of the indexes to its volumes, on archival description and technology. But the other journals can be found on EBSCO or Project Muse or History and Life services and their contents downloaded in PDF.

Someone commented yesterday on the A&A list about the fact that JSTOR is going to put The American Archivist in a section called "Library and Information Science" and made the inference that it kind of blows our professional identity discussion by again lumping us in with librarians. I can see this point and I'm sad that this is the case. Why can't The American Archivist be placed in with general history journals? The argument the past few days is that librarians can make just as good archivists as historians.

Why not a separate category for archives journals? I think we might eventually get to that point, but more archives journals need to be indexed and stored by JSTOR before that can happen. JSTOR is a good service, though they have the absolute worst recall vs. precision variance in all of journal indexing, in my opinion. Try to find something with one of their pre-loaded subject terms and you get thousands of hits that don't even fit that subject, let alone the "real" subject you were searching. But JSTOR is a good start.

I thought I'd list for everyone the eleven English-language archives journals I know about. All but one have paper versions. All but one (JAO) seem to have an online PDF version somewhere. Although we are a ways away from where we want to be, one of the planks in any occupation calling itself a profession is having professional literature - we have that.

Here is the list:

Archives & Manuscripts (Australia)
Journal of the Society of Archivists (UK)
Archival Science
Journal of Archival Organization
Archival Issues: The Journal of the Midwest Archives Conference
Provenance: The Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists
The American Archivists
Archivaria (Canada)
African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science
RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage
Archives & social Studies (Spain) (online only)

Copyright Extends to All SAA Units

About six months ago, Debra Kimok, vice-chair and newsletter editor of The Records Manager, the newsletter of the SAA Records Management Roundtable, received an email asking permission to mount an author's article on his company's website, extracting it from the newsletter. Debra then asked the question of myself and Dr. Frank Boles, SAA president, of whether we were allowed to do such a thing. Subsequently, the RMRT made a proposal to the SAA Council at its February meeting to refer this issue to the SAA Intellectual Property Working Group, chaired by Peter Hirtle. The group has come back with a proposal for Council to consider.

The proposal says:

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THAT the following policy statement be adopted by the SAA Council:

SAA GENERAL PUBLICATION SUBMISSION TERMS

The Society of American Archivists (SAA), in support of its mission to serve the education and information needs of professional archivists, sponsors a wide variety of publications that are issued both by SAA and its subsidiary units. The publications include journals, newsletters, flyers, and brochures as well as electronic mailing lists, websites, and services.

By submitting content to one of these publications, and in the absence of any other written agreement to the contrary, you consent to the following terms:

1. The author retains copyright in any submissions to SAA.

2. For any content you submit, you hereby grant to SAA a nonexclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, and fully sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, incorporate into other works, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, and otherwise exploit such content, in whole or ini part, in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed.

3. Any subsequent use of the article that you authorize must include a citation to the version as published by SAA.

4. You acknowledge that you have all necessary rights and permissions to make this submission and agree to these terms. You also acknowledge that your submission does not infringe on the intellectual property rights of any other person; is not libelous, defamatory, or obscene; and does not infronge on anyone's right of privacy. You agree to indemnify and hold SAA harmless from any claim arising from your submission.

5. SAA will publish your item under the current Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (by-nc) license (http://www.creativecommons.org).

6. SAA may, under your license grant above, authorize commerical use of your submission. You acknowledge that you are due no royalties or other compensation arising from such use. Similarly, SAA is due no royalties for any use you may make of your submission.

THAT this policy govern all submissions to SAA and its component groups (sections and roundtables);

THAT, in those cases in which a formal contract between an author and SAA is signed (such as for books and some journal artiles), the contract would take precedence, and that for all other submisssions (letters to the American Archivist, contributions to subunit newsletters, conferene papers posted to the wesite, etc.) this policy would govern;

THAT potential authors be notified of the existence of these terms via a posting of the terms on the SAA website, incorporated in or hyperlinked from the SAA copyright page;

THAT SAA national and component publications include links to the policy; and

THAT the editors of component journals, newsletters, and other materials be encouraged to include boilerplate language in their signature blocks so that potential authors know that submissions must be made in accordance with SAA's terms.

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I like this policy. It seems to cover everything, but it doesn't. One subsidiary unit is left out - student chapters. I know that not many student chapters, if any, publish anything like a newsletter, but there is the Chapters and Loose Papers publication, which is a bi-annual newsletter of news about all the SAA student chapters, currently at the end of its third year. This publication, and the authors who publish in it, also need to be protected because there are sometimes student publications (short ones) that appear in this newsletter. One of the things on my "to do" list today is to email the appropriate people and let them know of this unintentional oversight. Student chapters also need to be protected.

It would probably be rare that someone would challenge copyright in anything published by SAA subsidiary units, but I think it is a good thing to cover our collective asses just in case.

I am also fascinated by the mention of the Creative Commons licensing information. This brings up a question I have for Peter Hirtle and his group:

Question - If we publish under a Creative Commons license, do we need to display the Creative Commons logo in our publications and, if so, where in the publication?

Peter Hirtle and his group have done another good thing for SAA and I am proud to be in the same association with them. Please email your Council members and ask them to pass this proposal (with the student chapters amendment, of course).