Probing archivists’ perceptions and practices in privacy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Archivists participated in a survey to help provide insight around privacy and practice. The practitioners’ responses are bespeckled with varying levels of real-worklife experience with sensitive, private, and vulnerable archival information. The survey included some demographic questions as well as hypothetical scenarios, which prompted respondents to think about how they would respond in their professional capacities if these analogue, reformatted, or born-digital documents were under their stewardship, and invited respondents to share their own professional anecdotes of privacy practices. The survey and adjoining paper attempt to address two research questions, namely that around archivists’ decision-making in privacy issues in digitized collections, and if institutional policy informs practice. Responses indicate a variability in privacy practices specifically and in the concept of privacy broadly within the American organizations represented. Most archivists surveyed indicate they address privacy as a regular part of their practice, though we found very few had guiding practices or policies. Absence of targeted policy around privacy decision-making is prevalent in archives in the respondents’ institutions. Discussion around survey results is shared to serve as a springboard for informing policy-driven privacy practice, including recommendations for future research and some suggested resources.