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Amy Fitch has worked with the Rockefeller family archive for 12 years, where she is reponsible for compliance with donor privacy restrictions and oversight of classified materials. In November 2011, she participated in NARA's National Declassification Center week-long declassification training conference. For the past two years, Amy has served as a member of the Privacy & Confidentiality Roundtable Steering Committee. Previously, she was the school archivist at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, with responsibility for nonactive and academic personnel records. Amy majored in American Studies at Smith College and George Washington University. She has been a member of SAA since 1994 and a member of MARAC since 1993.
Privacy versus security versus access. Almost weekly, we hear about evolving and controversial complexities of these competing concepts as they relate to personal and sensitive information. In running for Chair-Elect of the roundtable, I'd like to see our group become more involved in this discourse and more engaged with the broader SAA community on the issues being raised.
Additionally, as we establish our bylaws this summer, we have a great opportunity to expand the opportunities for leadership within the roundtable, in particular by considering increasing the size of the Steering Committee. I also would like to cultivate and encourage more privacy-related session proposals for future annual meetings, as this timely national debate will continue to make news and impact our work environment.
Nancy Kaiser has been a manuscripts processing archivist at the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2000. She works almost exclusively with manuscript collections in the Southern Historical Collection and the Southern Folklife Collection. She received an M.A. in history from North Carolina State University and an M.S.L.S. from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
My experience with sensitive materials in manuscript collections started more than ten years ago with an effort to document the instances and duration of restrictions used at the Southern Historical Collection so that processing archivists such as myself would have consistent guidelines to follow. That modicum of in-house expertise led to years of discussions with technical services, public services, and curatorial colleagues with wide-ranging opinions about privacy and access: what constitutes "sensitive"? what are "reasonable" restrictions? and who should impose them? To keep those discussions honest I have tried to stay abreast of privacy law, notions of privacy across society, and the practice of privacy and access in our profession. As a member of the Privacy and Confidentiality Steering Committee I would like to encourage more profession-wide discussions of how archivists can find a workable balance for privacy and access. Specifically, I am eager to promote the idea of sharing responsibility for privacy protection among archivists, curators, donors, and researchers in order to promote access and use — our reason for keeping archives.
