Dear Colleagues

Here at The Fawcett Library we have been engaged for some 
time in reviewing all our policy during the development 
towards becoming The National Library of Women.

I have been discussing access and closures with individual 
archivists on an informal basis, and am broadcasting our 
present working practice re closures with the hope of 
getting back a variety of deeply-held professional opinions 
- please answer off-line to me at [log in to unmask]

Our holdings are a rich eclectic mix of personal, working 
papers, organisations including NGOs and small radical 
campaigning and pressure groups, business archives et al, 
ranging from 1770 to the present day.  A few collections 
hold records which have come to us by circuitous routes 
which are subject to statutory or customary closure dates.

Our general policy is to open collections to researchers as 
soon as possible after receipt, provided they have been 
assessed and listed at item level - a pre-sorting stage in 
the cataloguing process called an accession 
survey.  (For logistical reasons we can only offer limited 
physical access to these records because most of them are 
in an out-store, and really we would prefer readers to 
consult only those collections which have undergone the 
complete hierarchical cataloguing process.  But all the 
lists are freely open to researchers in the Library, even 
if they might have to ask for those still in manuscript 
form)

Closures presently typically fall into the following kinds 
of categories:

Personal medical records - 100 years (this category would 
include by extension e.g. a photocopy of an official case 
file of a child battered to death which came to us by a 
circuitous route in the records of a campaigning 
organisation)

Personnel/employee records - 75 years (this would include 
e.g. records of interview panels and applications for jobs 
in the records of feminist businesses/co-ops)

Case files - 75 years (this would include e.g. the records 
of a campaigning organisation taking up the cudgels on 
behalf of individual named women accused of being 
prostitutes)  Most case files (where they exist) are not of 
this type and so would not need to be closed.

Personal and subjective issues - up to 50 years or upon 
death of the donor, by agreement.  We have had to work hard 
to gain the trust (in the interests of the complete 
historical picture) of donors, so that their papers and 
lives can be used but not exploited.  Examples - 
same-sex love letters of women not out as lesbian, 
oral-history type manuscripts

To protect the innocent (or guilty) - up to 50 years or on 
death by prior agreement, e.g. the diary of a woman who was 
assisted to commit suicide, lists of doctors prepared to 
help with abortion before 1967 (even afterwards, in a USA 
context - and we are used internationally)

Organisational confidentiality - up to 20 years by 
agreement (usually 10), e.g. rancorous minutes or notes of 
meetings of organisations riven by internal politics

I welcome feedback - off-list please.  

Anna Greening
Archivist
The Fawcett Library
London Guildhall University
[log in to unmask]

 






 



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