from Jeremy York:

Elizabeth Yakel began the discussion about authority in archives with questions of who controls the past, and who should control the past. She outlined her own journey working with the Polar Bear Collections website over the last several years, a website that uses collaborative filtering, commenting, and other features to give users a shared role and voice in shaping interpretations of the World War I Polar Bear Expedition (http://polarbears.si.umich.edu). She argued that giving users a greater say in representations of the past was a question of recognizing authority – that archives do not always have the most authoritative sources when creating representations; sharing authority – having interpretations of collections mediated by archival staff, and users as well who respond to other users’ comments; and creating authority – creating a space for people to own their past and have a say in it. She concluded in the end that the important question in archives is not about authority, but about sharing. Authority can be shared in archives and that is where our emphasis should lie.

David Horrocks then turned the focus of the panel to government records and declassification. He spoke about the ways in which the digital environment is changing the way materials from the Ford Presidency are classified and shifting authority for determining which documents are made accessible from archivists to researchers. Authority in determining access to presidential archives is not held by archivists, but by agencies creating the archives. In the past, this resulted in a laborious process of photocopying materials, sending them to the agency, and awaiting declassification instructions. To increase the efficiency of this process, a new system of Remote Archival Capture (RAC), (a collaborative effort between presidential libraries, the CIA, and a private contractor), has been implemented to digitize archival materials and make them available electronically for review by creating agencies. Advantages of this have been greater efficiency and expertise in declassifying documents, an easier process of re-review, and increased access to collections for researchers who are able to make requests for specific folders and documents (rather than search through a collection of 400 cubic feet, for instance, without a finding aid). One disadvantage has been that with more specific requests, and because requests from researchers are honored equally, requests for materials regarding UFOs receive equal time and consideration as those regarding what some would consider weightier materials such as Vietnam or the Philippines. Another is that digital copies allow multiple agencies access to archival materials, in which they may also want to claim ownership and have a say in determining access.

Julie Herrada spoke last and talked about a variety of issues relating to curation and use of the Ladabie Collection. She noted that limited resources are a significant barrier to carrying out projects similar to the Polar Bear Project in Special Collections, as are issues of copyright and privacy. An institution with a conservative view of access to collections such as the UM Library would be interested in digitizing materials, but not necessarily in making them broadly available. One illustration of this is materials Special Collections owns relating to the investigation of crimes by military personnel during the Vietnam war, including of the My Lai massacre. It was not entirely clear if Special Collections was legally allowed to have these materials when they were accessioned, but there were added to the collection after due legal counsel. A journalist later used this collection to gain access to materials not released by the government and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work. While Special Collections in many ways does not have authority over how its collections are used (it may not hold the copyright for materials, for example) it is customary for those who know they will publish to use collections to ask the Library’s permission. The journalist did this and permission was granted, but these types of permission are one level of control that Special Collections enjoys, and would like to retain, over its collections. Another illustration arises from time to time regarding potential donors to the Special Collections whose views may or may not be in line with those expressed in areas of the Labadie Collection. At times such as these it is convenient to alternately showcase, or downplay materials in the Labadie collection [a practice that may not be as easily executed if the Labadie’s materials were more broadly available].