What an Archive Owes the Person It Describes

A woman in her eighties was shown a photograph of herself in a kitchen in 1989 by two separate people in the same month, both of whom meant it kindly. She had left the Practice in 1994 and had not spoken of it since. The photograph is not embarrassing. Nothing in it is untrue. That is what makes it a useful example rather than an easy one.

The case for keeping such things is strong and I want to state it properly before I disagree with it. An institution which quietly removes what it later finds inconvenient cannot be held to account by anyone, including by its own members. Our archivist has put this better than I will, and he is right that deletion removes the disagreement along with the entry. There are records in our collection which embarrass us and they should stay exactly where they are.

But the Record is not entitled to every fact it is capable of preserving. When a person handed us a letter in 1989 they were consenting to a filing cabinet in Maine, not to a search box. The obligation they accepted and the obligation we now impose on them are different obligations, and we changed the second one without asking.

Continuity is not the same thing as indefinite possession.

I am told, reasonably, that historical value must count for something. It does. It is not sufficient. A document may be genuinely valuable to a reader in 2080 and still be the reason a woman is asked about her mother at the shops this Thursday. The reader in 2080 is a real interest. So is the Thursday.

What I am not arguing for is worth saying twice, because the argument is easily mistaken for its worst version. I am not arguing that we should close records which make us look bad. Embarrassment is a reason to publish. I would support a rule saying so and I would apply it to my own house first. Nor am I arguing that a reader's discomfort is a ground for withdrawal; discomfort is frequently the point.

The concession I have to make is the one that costs. Sometimes the only honest remedy is annotation — printing the objection beside the entry — and I have seen annotation work. It is often better than closure, because it leaves the disagreement standing where a reader can see it, and because a person who has been described badly is at least described twice.

It does not always work. An annotation attached to a photograph does not stop the photograph being a photograph. When the harm is the visibility rather than the description, adding words is adding words.

I do not have the rule. The stewardship met in February and did not have it either, which I record without satisfaction, having been one of the people who did not have it. What we have is a list of things to weigh and a review date, which is the ordinary shape of an institution that has not finished thinking. My colleague believes that shape is a form of refusal. I think he may be right, and I would still rather it than a rule we would be ashamed of in ten years.