Post #7: Archival Ethics and Decisions on Document Preservation

After reading Timothy D. Pyatt’s article The Harding Affair Letters: How One Archivist Took Every Measure Possible To Ensure Their Preservation, I pondered upon the way that the letters were handled by archivist Ken Duckett and also how letters disclosing an affair of someone out of the public eye may have been treated during Duckett’s lifetime. For instance, if Duckett received a box which included documents about the life of someone who was a well-respected figure in their hometown, but not so much on a national or universal scale, would the same measures to preserve the Harding letters be illustrated in the case of this hypothetical figure? Would these measures have been different in Duckett’s time vs. what would occur today? Pyatt discloses that Duckett believed in preserving the letters to allow a fuller understanding of Harding’s narrative.[1] In contrast to the Harding letters, it can be argued that the letters of people who are not affiliated with political or public-related careers might not hold information valuable to a wider array of people and or contexts such as politics and presidential policies. However, if archivist like Duckett wish to preserve and allow a more holistic understanding of a person’s life, then it may be fair to use the same zeal of preserving documents about all narratives that are kept within an archive.

[1] Timothy D. Pyatt Qtd. John W. Dean, foreword to The Harding Affairs: Love and Espionage During the Great War, by James D. Robenalt (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2009), xi.

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