This week our readings focused on ethics and privacy in
Archives. The article that stood out to me the most was Sara Hodson's
"Privacy in the Papers of Authors and Celebrities". When I first read
the title of the article I thought the discussion would center around
celebrities like actors and tv personalities and how they had more privacy within
archives and paperwork than "regular" people. Boy, was I wrong. In
fact, celebrities and high-profile authors and scholars have far less privacy
within academia and the archives. Just think about past presidents or famous
activists or musicians - the things they left behind are picked over and
studied again and again so we can try to truly get to know them beyond their
fame. How many books, movies, and biographies are written about Elvis
alone?! Historians and everyday people
alike want to dive deep into the personal lives of these celebrities in order
to better understand who they were/are. Correspondence between George
Washington and just about anybody is
devoured by historians in an attempt to learn more about Revolutionary America
- to unearth new information about a time that was pivotal to the creation of
America as we know it today.
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| Page 1 of 5 of Elvis Presley's 1970 letter to President Richard Nixon requesting a meeting. Photo Courtesy of {http://todaysdocument.tumblr.com/post/14562284946/on-the-morning-of-december-21-1970-elvis-presley} |
The down-side of celebrity personal papers is that they are
strikingly different from the rest of the collections in an archive and require
much more diligence with upkeep and preservation measures. Here are the reasons
celebrity archives are different:
- Professionals fight over them. Famous personal papers bring both attention and revenue to an institution - not to mention prestige. Do you know how much one of John Lennon's journals would cost? You don't want to know.
- They are heavily used. The number of scholars and researchers who come to HSP to look through Revolutionary papers is astonishing. From a collections management prospective, this means a ton to wear and tear on the documents, photographs, or other archival pieces in the lifetime of a celebrity collection. Grease from researchers hands, folds in the paper, light & humidity exposure, tears, and general shifting and vibrations from constantly moving the collection. What a nightmare. Some collections can be so heavily used that actually shortens the lifespan of the documents. Heavily used collections also become a security hazard. They are both rare and valuable - making them hard to resist for those with sticky fingers.
- Celebrities lose their privacy because they become dehumanized. Sometimes celebrities lose what makes them human because we think of them more of a representation of an era or character than an actual person. Some have argued that their personal papers and artifacts become "public cultural treasures", no longer belonging to them, but part of our collective ethos or American culture. Is this true? Do you give up all privacy when you accomplish something great?
All in all, it was nice to read about ethics in archives
because it's one of the cornerstones of the profession. However, I'm still
unsure of if I would love to work with a famous collection, or if it would be
quite the chore.
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