Archival ethics: The truth of the matter

This essay explores the question of whether records professionals are as aware of the ethical dimensions of their work as they should be. It consider first the historical and professional context of archival ethics, then examines a recent case about business archives involving the author that suggests the need for renewed attention to professional ethics, and concludes with a discussion about how archivists might reconsider the ethical dimensions of their work

Rethinking archival ethics

This is a reevaluation of archival ethics and serves as an introduction to this issue

Privacy, Restriction, and Access: Legal and Ethical Dilemmas

This paper examines the intersection of privacy and access in archival repositories. Archival repositories are well known for containing restricted material, and for protecting the privacy of the donors. This literature review examines the need for restricted material from both legal and ethical standpoints, as well as discussing culturally sensitive materials while determining what archives and libraries can do to protect both themselves and their donors while enhancing accessibility and freedom of information

Native American Empowerment Through Digital Repatriation

Following the Enlightenment, Western adherence to positivist theory influenced practices of Western research and documentation. Prior to the introduction of positivism into Western scholarship, innovations in printing technology, literary advancements, and the development of capitalism encouraged the passing of copyright statutes by nation-states in fifteenth century Europe. The evolution of copyright and positivism in Europe influenced United States copyright and its protection of the author, as well as the practice of archiving and its role in interpreting history. Because Native American cultures practiced orality, they suffered the loss of their traditional knowledge and cultural expressions not protected by copyright. By incorporating postmodern perspectives on archiving and poststructuralist views on the formation of knowledge, this thesis argues that Native American tribes now use Western forms of digital technology to create archives, record their histories, and reclaim control of their traditional cultural expressions

Ethical Considerations in Web 2.0 Archives

In April 2010, the Internet company Twitter announced that it had granted its entire archive of “Tweets” to the Library of Congress. These Tweets are typically generated by public users, who may or may not understand or expect that their submissions will be archived by a government agency. Archives of Web 2.0 material raise new ethical considerations for archivists, who must balance interests in preserving material with privacy interests of users who generated the content. Archivists can address these concerns by requiring corporate donors to fully disclose the nature of the archive to users and by allowing users to opt-out of the archive. Archivists can also restrict access to the archive for a reasonable period of time

The Ethics of Processing

There are a number of sections and phrases in the Society of American Archivists\u27s 1992 Code of Ethics for Archivists which can help explain issues and try to answer questions related to ethical issues in arrangement and description. These are among the many professional considerations which must weigh into the way in which an archivist administers both processing and an overall archival program

Skeletons in Your Closet: Heavy Small Collections

“Archival description expresses professional ethics and values” (DACS, Revised Principle 1). How do we right the wrongs that our institutions and communities have committed or permitted when our collections contain evidence of harm? Increasing transparency about our archival judgments includes sharing our descriptive work and discussing how our archival ethics and responsibilities—to our materials, our communities, our institutions, and ourselves—shape our description and writin

Lessons from Archives: Strategies for Collecting Sociocultural Data in Machine Learning

A growing body of work shows that many problems in fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in machine learning systems are rooted in decisions surrounding the data collection and annotation process. In spite of its fundamental nature however, data collection remains an overlooked part of the machine learning (ML) pipeline. In this paper, we argue that a new specialization should be formed within ML that is focused on methodologies for data collection and annotation: efforts that require institutional frameworks and procedures. Specifically for sociocultural data, parallels can be drawn from archives and libraries. Archives are the longest standing communal effort to gather human information and archive scholars have already developed the language and procedures to address and discuss many challenges pertaining to data collection such as consent, power, inclusivity, transparency, and ethics & privacy. We discuss these five key approaches in document collection practices in archives that can inform data collection in sociocultural ML. By showing data collection practices from another field, we encourage ML research to be more cognizant and systematic in data collection and draw from interdisciplinary expertise.Comment: To be published in Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency FAT* '20, January 27-30, 2020, Barcelona, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 page