Archivists were invited to participate in a 2019 survey to help provide insight around privacy and practice. The practitioners' responses are bespeckled with varying levels of real-worklife experience with sensitive, private, and vulnerable archival information. The survey presented scenarios derived from real case studies, which prompted respondents to think about how they would respond in their professional capacities if these historic analog, now digitized documents were under their stewardship.
Two generalized scenarios regarding privacy decision making were presented to surveyed archivists from analog, print-only serial publications with limited distribution to specific audiences that were later digitized and put into online repositories for easy access. Both received viable complaints from people concerned about violations of their privacy—both claiming choices made in their youths now were easily findable and represent vulnerability and consequence in their middle-aged lives. One a crime listed in a college student newspaper (Cornell Chronicle); one a nude photograph in a lesbian sex-positive magazine for lesbians (On Our Backs).
Presented at the 2022 Document Academy conference, Akron, OH.
