Does anyone know the implications of the libel laws on closure periods for archives? Years ago, the Centre received legal advice about some material here that was considered to contain defamatory statements. The advice boiled down to the concept of qualified privilege: ie) allowing access by researchers who have a genuine, scholarly interest in the archives as opposed to researchers who are solely interested in the defamatory material. It is always difficult to discriminate between researchers in this way, however.
My understanding is that the distributors and newsagents are also potentially liable in a libel action. I would infer from this that archive repositories could also be vulnerable in some cases. It is clearly unfair and unrealistic to expect staff in repositories to check the veracity of statements in all documents that are produced for researchers. It would seem more reasonable to expect researchers to take sole responsibility for their publications based on use of archives. At the Centre, we ask all researchers to sign forms agreeing to abide by the Data Protection Act. Unfortunately I fear that a form of words trying to indemnify a repository against libellous publications based on its archives would not work. The repository might still fall foul of the libel laws.
Am I being too pessimistic?
Richard Temple
Richard Temple
Senior Assistant Archivist
Modern Records Centre
University Library
University of Warwick
Coventry
CV4 7AL
tel. (024) 7652 4493
fax. (024) 7652 4211
email [log in to unmask]
http://modernrecords.warwick.ac.uk
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