This is the sidebar.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Life Of An Archivist - Maintaining original order! Weeeeeeee!
I managed to cram my confusion into 140 characters
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
Progressive colleagues at SAA ‘11, here’s something to raise hell about other than the United Here Local 1 Issue:
Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency’s records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission’s internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.”
Do read more about money crimes and records crimes and how these go hand in hand. Archives professionals should probably be reminded of similar issues of NARA, the PRA, and records related to the war crimes and/or torture carried out by Bush administration officials. And why should Archivists be raising a stink in a case where it’s the SEC and Wall Street committing the crimes and where they might not have much power nor leverage? Where sometimes these crimes are committed even under the guise of the law? Because it strays into our turf and because sometimes you have to wonder if we don’t, who the hell else is going to?
The most important piece of furniture in a house is the garbage can. I keep no archives of my own, no sketches, no photos, no clothes—nothing. I am supposed to do, I’m not supposed to remember.
Karl Lagerfeld (via claytoncubitt) - interesting, but archiving is a way of doing. (via palimpsestghost)
Yes, archiving is a process. And as far as Lagerfeld goes, he’s doing it right.
why is this information being disclosed now? Second, why was this message sent only to Annual Meeting registrants? Finally (and most importantly), what does SAA Headquarters hope to achieve by revealing this information?
- Hillel Arnold poses some serious questions for SAA leadership regarding their latest missive. (important reading if you’re in the business)
Personally speaking, I couldn’t really afford to attend the Annual SAA meeting this year anyway, so it wasn’t much of an issue, but if I could have afforded I would have opted out of going because of the labor dispute a long time ago. I take this as a personal decision regarding how I feel about issues like this and I make no judgement on how others have decided or will decide. The latest dispatch from SAA regarding the situation, however, may have changed matters for some Archivists and changes even how I view SAA’s role in this issue. As Hillel points out,
“It’s one thing for SAA to try and walk a neutral line in a labor dispute (although that’s usually impossible); it’s another for it to so blatantly place itself on the side of management and corporate interest.”
Now I am re-evaluating my relationship to SAA, much less just this annual meeting.
Anselm Kiefer
Well as long as the arrangement and description are in order, i see no problem with this…
standardgrey: VIA J:
For the past month my mom has been scanning hundreds of negatives taken over a twenty year period by my grandmother and a few other members of the family/community. As she said “There were many little Kodak envelopes of black & white negatives. They are all here…uncensored and in random chronological order.”
Most of the images were taken on and around the central Alberta farm that my mom grew up on…
There is something so powerful about a community’s documentation of itself. Thought you might be interested.
bolded emphasis mine. I would add that there is something powerful about an individual’s drive to further preserve, document, and broadcast the history of that community.
your Archive and its material is only as good as it relates to people
too many times I feel like colleagues get lost in the materials. Sure, we need to protect them and describe them and etc etc etc… and we wind up putting blinders on and forgetting the human element. Even our idea of access is often skewed, focusing on how many users and what they might be using and less on how they’re using it or how it could potentially be used more effectively. If your work cannot somehow (now or in the future) serve real human beings, it’s time to question what you’re doing and why.
The Archivist as portrayed in Iron Man 2.0 #4.
1) The crotchety and unhelpful Archivist who puts down the researcher and is dismissivly protective of all the valuable information he/she is preserving. Terribly cliché, but cliché for a terrible reason: It still happens.
2) What is with the cognitive dissonance of the overly-protective Archivist? Why even preserve information at all that is never to be seen or used or spread?
3) The last aspect is the “walk-away and leave the researcher alone to wade through papers/transcripts/etc…” An old school habit that needs reform. While the process of discovery is absolutely important for the researcher (they will see things that both themselves and the Archivists wouldn’t have known to look for) if you know the sort of thing the researcher is looking for, and you’re so intimately familiar with “your” precious material, why not help?
