In our manuscripts collections we have the address books belonging to a
well known author. They contain the personal addresses of lots of people.
Researchers would no doubt be interested to look at these address books.
These third parties in the books may not wish their contact details to be
made publicly available. Should we:
a) Make the address books available, as we would with any other manuscripts
material, and get users of the books to sign a DPA form stating that they
will only use the information for research purposes, and not for
circulation or publication without the explicit consent of the third party.
b) In addition to the above, treat the address books as if they were
electoral registers and supervise the use of the material, allowing only
handwritten notes.
c) Contact the people in the address book and seek their permission to make
the address books available (bearing in mind that the books do not belong
to them, and that doing so would be unrealistic in terms of staff time -
given that we have many such resources like this).
d) Contact the well known author and suggest that this part of the
collection be closed access for x number of years (bearing in mind that FOI
(S)A asks us not to withhold information unless absolutely necessary.
e) Something else.
We have lots of material like this, buried in amongst collections. It is
inevitable that third party information will become available to users in
this way via collections of donated / deposited manuscripts. But it
concerns me that the rights of third parties are probably being abused.
All users now sign a registration form which contains a code of conduct,
point 1 being "Readers should ensure that any information obtained from our
collections relating to living individuals is used in accordance with the
principles of the Data Protection Act 1998". Is this enough? Th esame
applies to correspondence (where A deposits a collection of letters
including letters received from B, C and D)
Cheers
Graeme
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