I advised a learned society that had within its archive some correspondence
that related to living individuals (and in one letter, the correspondence
was arguably defamatory about a living individual) that it needed to get
itself registered under the DPA and should consider refusing access to
sensitive materials to researchers until the individuals in question had
died. In the recent Lutchansky case, the Courts showed themselves
unsympathetic to the needs of libraries and archives to perform a public
service, and made it clear libraries and archives have to obey the law just
like everyone else. Now it may well be that post Durant, an archive
collection itself is not considered "personal data" (but that would not
help avoid legal problems if defamatory material was held in the archive)
but other sorts of personal data, such as searching habits of researchers,
may well be personal data. Unless there is good reason to keep it and making
it available to third parties using the exemption for research purposes, it
should be embargoed until the individuals concerned have died.
Charles
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509-223053
e mail [log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Graeme Hawley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 2:32 PM
Subject: Impact of DPA on research collections
> Whilst going through our own archives of correspondence at the Library, it
> struck me that this was the kind of data that we probably should not be
> keeping: people's requests for information, with additional information
> about their research interests, academic biography, future travel plans,
> and of course name and address (and often telephone number).
> Occasionally,
> health details also given. It also struck me that this is exactly the
> sort
> of data that some of our collections of third party manuscripts are made
> up
> from. These collections are of scholarly interest to researchers, and it
> is difficult to imagine academia without the legacy of letters and diary
> extracts that enrich research. If the DPA was to be implemented with
> Draconian verve, what would happen to the correspondence based archives of
> the future? And what should I do with our own correspondence chains which
> stretch back to the 1940s and show, amongst other things, how cooperative
> the library community remained during the Cold War, or how research
> interests and communities in Scotland have developed? I think about the
> purpose of the correspondence in the first place, and have to concede that
> retaining the correspondence we receive for the purpose of scholarly
> research in the future would not comply with the 2nd principle. And what
> do I do with the masses and masses of third party correspondence?
>
> Any thoughts very welcome.
>
> Cheers
> Graeme
>
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