Rethinking Archival Ethics

IntroductionEthics has been a persistent topic within the American archival community for more than a half-century, much of it treated, until recently, in the most benign matter (by this I mean that it has been a topic assumed to be important for symbolic reasons but not to possess any substantial practical value in the archivist's daily work). The earliest discussions were mostly about an ethics code, presented almost always as key to claiming that archivists represented not just a community but a profession, and for some, even a discipline (the disciplinary claims have come as a more theoretical and scholarly literature has taken root). We moved from a statement that could be framed and hung on a wall to a more intricate document with specifics encompassing, even advising archivists what to do when they discovered a breach of moral conduct. Would that the discussions had stopped there. Within a relatively brief time the ethics code moved full circle from being an ornamental wall hanging to what became termed an aspirational document, something intended to help archivists understand the ethical dimensions of their work but without fear of censure or other actions if they wandered outside of the parameters of ethical behavior; in other words, the code is intended to give something archivists can aim at but not fret too much if they fall short.1If we examine the professional literature of the 1970s and 1980s, when most of the formative discussion about an ethics code emerged, we can detect some fissures in the ethical foundations of professional practice. In my own essay on professionalism in the mid-1980s, I ended with a comment that archivists had to understand that being professional required both authority and power.2 Even though, just a short time after, archivists began reading about the implicit power of recordkeeping and information systems,3 American archivists generally found it repugnant that they would wield any degree of power. The real substance of issues about power actually emerged within the archival community and its professional associations. While the Society of American Archivists continued to refine its ethics code, these refinements gutted any sense of an ethics process. and the Society's actions in other ways suggested that it had little intention of pursuing an ethical agenda. Debates about the appropriateness of a labor poster on the cover of the American Archivist, access to the records of the Office of Presidential Libraries, and the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, just to name a few recent cases, have all attested to the significance of ethics as a professional concern and the limitations of American archivists to appropriately frame this topic.4It is not my intent, in this brief essay, to rehash the substance of these debates, especially since I have written about these matters elsewhere. My purpose here is to identify some elements of what I see as the unfinished work on archival ethics, and what I have selected to discuss relate to my personal interests and concerns (others would select different topics or will disagree with my choices). My hope is that what I have written here will continue to spur on new discussion, and, in fact, some of my observations may seem to some as being a bit far-fetched (concerning issues and concerns not normally commented on in this context). It is the nature of archival ethics, now at least, to be controversial (mainly because it forces practicing and prospective archivists out of their comfort zones). The ethics of archival work looms into the future as one of the most important professional issues, permeating every aspect of what archivists do, even our efforts to manage born-digital evidence systems or to select what analog documents will be digitized. The technical challenges of such digital stewardship work, long attested to as the greatest challenges facing archivists, may pale in comparison to the ethical aspects these systems generate. …